Are religions manmade and natural or supernaturally based?

By the same reasoning, the Gospel of Mary Magdalane is, if anything, even more credible than the account of the resurrection, and we should all immediately become Gnostics.After all, it says that Jesus loved Mary even more than he loved the male disciples, and that he confided to her privately important teachings that he wouldn't tell the Apostles in public --- and given the lowly status of women at the time the Gospel of Mary was composed, no-one would have made that up. Therefore, the Gospel of Mary and all its contents must be true. Logic! Well, what passes for logic round here, anyway.

And yet your reasoning in support of the canonical gospels would prove it genuine, and indeed more likely to be genuine than they are. Which suggests that there's something wrong with your reasoning. 'Tis. But only because the Bible was compiled by people ignorant of your criterion of whether a book is genuine.

It's a narrative. It includes Jesus making long speeches, but then so do the canonical Gospels --- the Sermon on the Mount comes to mind. As to whether they'd have said it, that depends on whether the Gospel of Mary is accurate, let's not do circular reasoning here. And that's the point. According to your reasoning, Faith, according to your reasoning, that means that it must be true because no-one would have made it up.Look, this is simple a fortiori reasoning. Let's go over it again.You say that the canonical gospels must be true, because no-one would have invented a story which gives a significant role to women.But here we have the Gospel of Mary, which gives an even more significant role to a woman --- indeed, to the same woman. It says that Jesus favored her above the male disciples, over the Twelve Apostles themselves.This leaves you with two choices:(1) You can follow your own reasoning, and say that no-one would have invented the Gospel of Mary which elevates a woman above all the male disciples put together. In which case the Gospel of Mary is true and we should all believe a bunch of Gnostic nonsense.(2) You can reject your own reasoning, and admit that the rather less prominent part played in the canonical gospels by women is not in fact good evidence for the truth of the canonical gospels.

You can say that, but that would be incredibly stupid.Oh for fuck's sake. You wish to argue that THE SAME THING is an argument for the truth of the canonical gospels, and that THE SAME THING should be ignored as an argument for the truth of the Gnostic gospels.I have literally laid my head down upon my keyboard and wept with laughter, with mirth and despair mingled.

Yes it is. * sigh *But look, Faith, you said that no-one would make up a story giving a such a prominent place to women. But the Gospel of Mary gives an even more prominent place to women. And the Gospel of Mary is, by your own admission, made up. Therefore, people would make up a gospel in which women play a prominent role. We know that they would because they did. So you can't argue for the truth of the canonical gospels on the basis that no person would do such a thing, because you know that such a thing was in fact done by a person.---By analogy, suppose Obama was accused of illegally bugging his political opponents, and I argued against it on the grounds that "no American President would do such a thing". Then all you would have to do would be to whisper "Nixon. Watergate." I can't argue that no American President would do such a thing when we know perfectly well that an American President did.This would leave open the question of whether Obama did it too, but it does completely destroy the particular argument I used.---In general, if an argument rests on saying "This thing could not occur", then we can destroy the argument by pointing to a case in which it occurred.This is really not a difficult concept, and I don't see why I have had to spell it out at such great length.

No, you don't. You really don't. You don't. That much is clear. No. Absolutely not.As you say, you do not understand my reasoning. Try reading it again.

I'm sure the two of you have a lot to discuss. Let us know when you reach a consensus.

Well, suppose that we had only literary evidence for the invasion of Gaul, and no physical evidence at all. Now suppose that the literary evidence described Caesar and his armies conquering Gaul mounted on flying elephants. Would you give this account any credence? The idea that if we believed every crazy story we heard we'd end up believing all sorts of dumb nonsense is hardly an "assumption".

Well there's no need to brag.

If you will show your working, I will point out where the error is.