Are religions manmade and natural or supernaturally based?

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I'm afraid that it is, when you seem to be merely avoiding the argument. In case you have forgotten, here it is again

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That was not what I was addressing at that point. This is the claim I was addressing:

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My first reason for believing in the story of Jesus is the amount of physical evidence we have for the legitimacy of the New Testament, in comparison with how much real evidence we have for other historical people and documents.

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As I pointed out you do not have any significant amount of physical evidence for the accuracy of the Gospels. This also addresses your false accusation of a misquote

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On what grounds do you accept the historicity of Plato, Lucretius, Pliny, Demosthenes, Herodotus, Suetonius, Tacitus, and Aristotle, and deny that of the NT, when equally as little evidence (absolutely nothing) of original texts exist?

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Let us note that some of those are philosophers more than historians. The others, as I said are judged on our knowledge of them, their sources and their methods. so to accuse me of evading the issue is false.I would add that none are accepted uncritically. Suetonius' story of the events around The birth of Augustus, for instance, is highly suspect. Plato's story of Atlantis is hardly accepted as reliable history, and even his Socratic dialogues are taken to be more Plato's invention than a recounting of actual conversations.

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I never claimed to have physical evidence. Only that evidence exists, and I have shown some. And that is really the issue here. At a basic level, you refuse to be open-minded to the possibility that the claims of scripture (the original documents) might be be true.

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False. I refuse to uncritically accept them, and therefore treat them like other historical documents.

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There is no "imagining" here, friend. The fact remains that this is a fallacious argument from ignorance. We can't say "because we don't know for sure" the stories are probably untrue. This is a leap of faith on your part and remains to be proven

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I don't say it. That IS purely your imagination.

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I have agreed with you that the number of copies is not evidence of the reliability of the original documents. But have rebutted that we have the same problem with many other ancient documents, and yet easily accept their historicity. You have continued to avoid this argument.

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That you have ignored my answer does not mean that I am evading the question

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Yes, if that point is "we don't know." However, I have demonstrated that there exists more evidence for than against in this case, so a case can cogently be made

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No, you have demonstrated that there is no good evidence for. We have yet to discuss the evidence against.

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We know that all the gospels compiled sources to make their claims. At worst, this again becomes a personal faith issue, for it would be another argument from ignorance, since there are things we don't know. We can't make assumptions based on what we don't know. Why assume they were? Seems like more fallacious ad hominem - people fall for all sorts of things all the time, Christians are not special in that regard, and this line of reasoning does not logically follow.

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Unfortunately for you my argument is based on what we do know. I'm not claiming that Christians are special - I'm claiming that the early Christians were susceptible to the same problems as other humans, and using modern Christians as an especially apt example.if you wish to claim otherwise, it is up to you to produce evidence. ca you reliably identifie the sources used by Mark? Can you give reasons to show that they are reliable, that the author of Mark was a good historian ? This is the sort of thing you should have been producing from the start. Ask yourself why you ignored that to rely on spurious arguments instead.

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This is exactly the kind of conclusion that is not sufficient, since it basically says "we can't know for sure the original history, therefore the copies probably can't be trusted" without offering any alternative. This is a logical fallacy, an appeal to ignorance (argumentum ad ignorantiam). We can't say "because we're not 100% sure about the originals, we can't draw conclusions about the copies," because if we do that with scripture we have to do that with Plato, Suetonius, Tacitus, because we have no originals from them either. And of course older works which we have even less evidence for, like Lucretius, Pliny, Demosthenes, and Herodotus would be in the same boat as well.

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No, it is saying that in the absence of good evidence for reliability (and with good reasons to expect strong bias) we cannot conclude that they are reliable. I am not arguing here for unreliability, I am countering your arguments for reliability. And if you cannot see that then you need to open your eyes.

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It's not. All four women have a mystical experience:

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Greatest I Am might find accounts of mystical experiences to be convincing evidence. I do not.

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This section of the story was not a late addition. This is the story they went back and told the apostles. Why was this story to be believed, and not dismissed as the fantasies of grief-stricken women? I agree that this story is not as significant as the post-resurrection appearances, but it is not as simple as a missing body

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Since it appears in Luke it likely is a late addition. Mark simply says that the women saw a young man in a white robe who delivered a slightly - but significantly - different message. Not much evidence of a mystical experience there. And that itself is likely a late addition to the story of Jesus.

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That is not quite what I was getting at. The point of this is that Jewish readers of the resurrection story would have totally dismissed it because women are depicted as the very first witnesses to the resurrection

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Mark is directed at a Gentile audience, as is Luke.And as for the first witnesses to the resurrection: Neither Cephas nor the twelve were women. The empty tomb story - including the women - is nowhere to be seen. And that is where your argument fails. Paul did not even mention the women or their testimony. How then could it be a problem ?

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Another argument from ignorance here. We cannot assume the appearance to the 500 has little value because of the information we don't have. . We only work based on what we know, not the other way around.

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Unfortunately you contradict yourself. The assessment of evidential value is based on what we do know. What we don't know can't be counted as evidence.

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Since we don't know when this appearance happened, it makes sense that it would not appear in the Gospels or Acts, and logically must have happened after these accounts were written. At the same time, it must have happened relatively soon to their writing, since 1 Corinthians was written approx. 55 AD.

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However, scholars date ALL the Gospels and Acts later than 1 Corinthians. And decisively, 1 Corinthians 15 places that appearance before the appearance to James, and the appearance to Paul. Since that appearance is mentioned in Acts, clearly all the preceding appearances had to occur before Acts was written.

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Unfortunately, most scholars agree that these things did have a large role to play within the early growth of the Christian church. Your argument seems to, again, be appealing to the "we don't know" factor, rather than offering alternatives.

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My argument is, of course, that the evidence for the resurrection is not good. Therefore that is all I need to show.

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Mentioning the Mormons here makes sense, but it leaves out huge factors like the cultural norms of Mormonism, which includes control, indoctrination, seclusion, and community isolation. These things were not characteristic of early Christianity.

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I would disagree. Acts, for instance suggests that there was quite strong pressure for members to hand over their money to the community. (Acts 4:34-35 and Acts 5 1-11)

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Unfortunately friend, almost all of these arguments are based on the fallacious appeal to ignorance

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Unfortunately for you, that is a complete falsehood. The only genuine argument from ignorance you identified was a product of your own imagination.

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In the same way, we cannot doubt the validity of the NT simply because we are not 100% certain of the believeability of the events within the originals. In fact, this seems to be more of a personal belief issue than an issue of evidence.

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It is odd that someone who is so free of accusing others of making arguments from ignorance would say such a thing. To presume that i have no reasons for concluding that the Gospels are unreliable before we have even discussed that topic. This discussion, I remind you, is about your claims to have evidence for the resurrection. Not my arguments against. On that subject you are clearly ignorant and jump to a false conclusion based on that ignorance.

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So in conclusion, my appeal remains: I have known the risen Christ I choose to believe this. What will you choose to believe?

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I do not find belief to be a choice. I will go where the evidence leads me. And it leads away from Christianity.

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Morrison was a lawyer who was convinced that miracles did not occur and that Jesus was nothing more than a (misunderstood) good man. He set out to write a booklet arguing his case, focused primarily in what he saw as contradictions in the gospel accounts just before and including Jesus' crucifixion.

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Rather than arguing with an entire book - and I note that you don't quote any arguments from it - I'll point out that it is events AFTER Jesus' death that are important to the resurrection. Looking at the wrong evidence is hardly a good way to reach a conclusion.To add further, on having looked at the text it seems to have very little value. Morrison uncritically accepts the Gospeks as reliable. It does not, for instance occur to him that the Gospel accounts of Jesus trial would be heavily biased and naturally would insist on Jesus' innocence - the more so if they were relying on Christian sources.Now maybe somewhere Morrison comes up with a good answer to a point I have raised. But digging through such unpromising material to find points to refute is hardly worth my time. If kbertsche wishes to claim such arguments are there it is his responsibility to produce them. Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

Imagine a lawyer appealing a court decision.Imagine that he submits a document which he identifies as minutes of the trialSuppose that this document is written by partisans of the accused, who were not present for the trial.That's the sort of lawyer Morrison was. At least according to you.Unless you admit that he was writing as an apologist, not a lawyer, a believer who unquestioningly accepted the Gospels as accurate - even when dealing with matters that none of the authors witnessed - you are not honestly presenting Morrison's work.

And there you go lying again. I did not call anyone a liar in that post, I merely pointed out the Morrison was certainly not critically examining the Gospel accounts, as a lawyer might be expected to do. Which is a fact obvious to anyone who bothers to read Morrison's writing.

Again you misrepresent my point.The Gospel writers WERE partisan, as should be obvious and therefore their accounts should not be uncritically accepted, especially for events they certainly did not witness.Morrison does uncritically accept the Gospel accounts as reliable (except maybe for the miracles), therefore he is not investigating them as a lawyer would be expected to do.None of this is in any way objectionable or false or accuses anyone of lying

Again, my assessment is based on his arguments. If Morrison talks about having the minutes of the trial (as he does), when all he truly has is partisan accounts whose sources are unknown then he is at the least placing great trust in those accounts, inappropriate to a lawyer conducting an unbiased investigation. Everywhere I see the assumption that the Gospels are accurate without any attempt to deal with the obvious questions.

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Again, this was not my argument. My argument was that we have a lot of physical evidence for the legitimacy of the NT in comparison with how much real evidence with have for other historical people/documents. This is the same argument I have been pointing back to.

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So this is some argument for some unspecified "legitimacy" that still allows for the Gospels to be too unreliable to serve as useful evidence for the resurrection? Isn't that a complete waste of time?

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This is true. However, for example, the wide majority of the scholarly community accepts that Socrates did indeed exist, even though we have absolutely nothing original from him, only the things Plato said about him. My point is that the evidence is the same, and a certain element of faith must be employed in both cases.

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And yet we have more evidence for the existence of Sicrates than just Plato - references from other contemporaries. And, of course, we aren,t arguing about the existence of Jesus.Instead of wasting time you may assume that I accept the Gospels as Christian documents from the latter part of the 1st Century, although with some additions, and that Jesus existed, was crucified and died.

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Then you must be willing to say that you can't possible know one way or the other, just like we can't possibly know one way or the other with most of the other writers I've mentioned. It is a personal faith issue.

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I prefer evidence to personal faith. if your case boils down to personal faith we may end it here.

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won't respond to each of these, but in a general sense, your argument thus fas has appeared to be one based on a logical fallacy, an appeal to the facts that:

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1) While we have many manuscripts of the NT, they are copies, so this is no indication that the originals were accurate stories
2) We don't know for sure Mark's sources, therefore because of the extraordinary claims it probably isn't reliable

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Both appeals to ignorance. But neither logically necessarily follow. Just because we don't know for sure does not prove that they are not trustworthy. If it was that easy the debate would be settled, and as far as I know, it's not.

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More accurately the evidence you have produced contributes little to your case, and you haven't produced evidence that would contribute to your case. From this it follows that you haven't made much of a case. That's not an argument from ignorance.Again your "argument from ignorance" is a figment of your imagination. I have not yet argued for the untrustworthiness of the Gospels.

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I have indeed provided evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, and offered the best explanation for the rapid spreading and growth of the early Christian church. You have not offered an alternative argument for how this could have happened.

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I'd say that the truth of the resurrection is almost irrelevant. We see Paul preaching about it, but the only evidence offered is a list of Jesus sightings - even the empty tomb story is completely absent. The only sighting described in any detail is Paul's own visionary experience. Even if the resurrection story was important - and you haven't even shown that - there seems little need for there to be an actual resurrection. And I'm not even suggesting a fraud like the Book of Mormon (although Joseph Smith did a better job of providing evidence, even for his lies)I would suggest that Christianity succeeded more because of the appeal of the teachings, gifted preachers, the attractions of the communal life and other factors which would apply whether there was a real ressurection or not.

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I recognize that your entire counter argument is the ambiguity surrounding the source(s) of Mark, however this is still an appeal to ignorance. I am comfortable admitting that we have hypotheses based on what we know, and a couple different cases for the authorship of Mark can be made, but we are not 100% sure. Personally I believe that John Mark, the traveling companion of both Paul and Peter compiled the book of Mark, with his largest source probably being the stories Peter told him personally. There is evidence for this.

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I'm willing to accept that Mark was at least in part - perhaps largely - based on things the author heard from Peter. You yourself claimed the Gospel writers compiled sources so presumably he had others. And let us also note that Papias - the major source for the identification - says that the Gospel got at least some events out of order (there you are - evidence of unreliability). But that still doesn't get us very far. Also note that Peter was not a witness to the events of concern in this discussion, and we can't reliably identify him as the source for those. So, a small start towards making a case - but still far short, and very, very late.Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

Of course it is far from clear that there ever was such a tomb. The earliest report we have is more than twenty years after the event, and tells us that the witnesses did not pass in the story - at least at that time. The story itself is somewhat unlikely, and really, a missing body is very poor evidence of a resurrection anyway.The empty tomb story is not important evidence.

Which of the different narratives isn't made up? Which one is true and how do you tell ?

Really? All the different versions are all true ? It doesn't seem very plausible, does it ?And how do you tell ?

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Seems very plausible to me that all are true because I think the supposed contradictions either aren't contradictions but resolved in terms of different angles of perception, or are actually evidence of authenticity because they reflect the natural misperceptions human beings are prone to, which is more or less what GDR was getting at.

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So really it comes down to the fact that your claim to have evidence is based on your faith rather than vice versa. We've seen how you deal with the Bible and you've made it very clear that you put your beliefs ahead of even what the Bible says.As for GDR he'll say that evenwhen it is obviously ridiculous, so his opinion is equally worthless.

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I already said how I tell and said it in many ways: By the style and tone of the writers, by their choice of facts, by their lack of whitewashing, by their sincere honest personas etc.

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And I know that you've said much the same about Chiniquy which makes it quite laughable.In reality we have a fairly clear example of a story growing over time.And, just to go back to an obvious point that you haven,t addressed. If this is such great evidence why don't we see any mention of it for more than twenty years ?Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

Fair and honest judgement almost always comes down against you. And it does so again.Your opinions aren't evidence.

Exactly my point. The Empty Tomb story was not even mentioned in the texts we have from the first twenty years. A report of a missing body so long after the fact can hardly be considered great evidence of a resurrection. Surely it is more important that the man was seen alive.