Hitch is dead

But you know little or nothing about the Bible authors' intent. You may know what Irenaeus, Polycarp, etc. believed the authors intended but that's no different than knowing what Tolkien believed about elves.Edited by ringo, : No reason given.

Actually we can. Again from Luke 1:

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1 Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, 2 just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. 3 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, 4 so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.

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You can't have eye witnesses to a fictitious event. You can't investigate fiction.Also it isn't as if this Gospel is written in isolation. There are the other Gospels, (this was probably the last one), in circulation as well as the Epistles. Also people don't build social constructs around fictitious writings. Also this is written a thousand years prior to that type of fiction being written.

You can have fictional eyewitnesses to a fictional event, cited in a fictional account of a fictional event.You can't use the Bible as evidence that the Bible is true. There are other stories about James Bond besides the ones written by Ian Fleming. They don't make James Bond more real. Sure they do. May the Fourth be with you (Star Wars), Dungeons and Dragons, etc. That's like saying the Wright Brothers didn't have an airplane because it was years before anybody else had one.

You can have absolutely totally fictitious accounts from eye witnesses to an event.

In the first place you can as the Bible isn't simply one book. You not only have 4 individual Gospel accounts, there are all of the epistles and their various authors.
Also there is Papius and Polythorpe. Josephus mentions Jesus. Tacitus wrote this after the great fire in Rome in 64AD

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But all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor, and the propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an order. Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Juda, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.

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This is from wiki.

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The historicity of Jesus relates to whether Jesus of Nazareth was a historical figure. Virtually all scholars who have investigated the history of the Christian movement find that the historicity of Jesus is effectively certain,[1][2][3] and standard historical criteria have aided in reconstructing his life.[4] Scholars differ on the beliefs and teachings of Jesus as well as the accuracy of the details of his life that have been described in the gospels, [5][6][7][note 1] but virtually all scholars support the historicity of Jesus and reject the Christ myth theory that Jesus never existed

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At any rate we are both going to believe what we are going to believe. As far as I am concerned the evidence for the resurrection is substantial. There is IMHO no other plausible explanation for the rise of Christianity and the form it took. The basic argument against it is that we know that it can't happen. While, if there is an intelligence responsible for the existence of life then it can happen. A lot depends on one's starting point of theism or materialiam.

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As far as I am concerned the evidence for the resurrection is substantial

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And you’ve worked hard at deceiving yourself into thinking that. But until you can explain why the author of Matthew thought that the Disciples went to Galilee and saw Jesus there - while the author of Luke insists that they changed their minds and stayed in Jerusalem - because Jesus showed up in person and told them to, your position is considerably weakened. Making the obviously daft claim that it’s like a car accident (unless you mean a car accident when the driver and passengers are so high in drugs they don’t have a clue where they are and what’s really going on) doesn’t cut it with any reasonable person. In a car accident there would at least be broad agreement on where it happened and I don’t see how the first meeting with the resurrected Jesus should get forgotten - so that it only appears in Luke.

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There is IMHO no other plausible explanation for the rise of Christianity and the form it took.

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Well there are but you don’t like them. And the problems with the Gospel stories at least indicate that the actual post-resurrection events weren’t that memorable.

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The basic argument against it is that we know that it can't happen.

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And there’s the usual strawman. But I suppose you can’t admit to better arguments because you can’t admit to the evidence.

There is though one really big, plausible and verifiable explanation for the rise of Christianity and the form it took and that is getting adopted as the State Religion by the Super Power of the day. Until that happened Christianity was and remained a very minor fringe cult.

For our purposes here, it is one book. It is one canon, chosen by a group of people as "true". You can expect some agreement among its parts. We're not discussing specifically whether or not the resurrection was real. My objection is to your claim that the Bible stories were "obviously" intended to be understood as real. There is nothing obvious about it. You have admitted yourself that the Bible does contain fiction, which is a direct contradiction of your original claim.And you could not have picked a worse example anyway. We do not see stories about resurrections in the news. My starting point was theism.

The Bible is the canon we wound up with. There is also the question of what is true. Is the story of the "Good Samaritan" true? There are many parts of the Bible that I don't believe are true such as the case of God either commanding or committing genocide or public stoning.Everything written is written from some point of view and we come to our own conclusions by doing our best to understand the various writers biases, their sources, and in the case of historical writers the culture, styles of writing and supporting documents from their era.The world of Jesus was far removed from the world of Isaiah and even further removed from the world of Moses. When I claimed that the Bible didn't contain fiction I was using the definition that in order for it to be fiction, it had to be intended to be understood as neither literally true or as a parable. That was not to say that there aren't accounts in the Bible the are false. I then accepted your idea of what constitutes fiction Well no, the whole Christian message is that this was a one off. My point was a materialist cannot accept belief in resurrection as it is contradictory to their fundamental view of the world. As a theist I can't conclusively prove the historicity of the resurrection, but I can look at what we have and start with the view that it is possible.

I think I've already answered that. It's fiction, like the talking snake or the resurrection. The Good Samaritan, however, is plausible where the other two are not - and its message is true. That's the weakest part of your case. You've sanitized the parts you don't like for no other reason than that you don't like them. That doesn't wash. You know nothing of the authors' intentions.

I did agree to use your contention that the Good Samaritan is fiction and went with that. By your definition I agree that the snake story is fiction, (as in a metaphor) however I obviously disagree that the resurrection is fiction. You are right that I don't like them but I have reason to reject them. Firstly once again, the Bible isn't simply one book and each book can and should be understood on their own merits.I start with the belief that God's nature can be seen perfectly embodied by Jesus. So when I look at the accounts of God ordering genocide and public stoning I can see that it is consistently at odds with what we see in the teachings of Jesus, therefore I reject them.People like Bart Ehrman rejected their Christian faith on the grounds that he found that the suffering in the world is inconsistent with a loving god. I have considerable sympathy with that POV however I remain a Christian as I still believe that God has given us the will and the ability to mitigate much of the world's suffering, and that is what we are all called to. I also believe that this life isn't the end and that there is better to come.

Which is an unevidenced belief.If you can bear it, this is the more objective version of events described in your book. You'll probably find yourself rebelling against it, but do try.Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story » Internet Infidels

There are many things about that article that I concur with. BTW, I reads and listen to a number of scholars who would agree with Carrier. In the last few days I've listened to and read a considerable amount of what Bart Ehrman has to say.I agree that it all is ultimately about belief, however I don't agree that it is unevidenced belief, but I do agree that it isn't conclusive.I don't have a problem agreeing to the point that many of the events around the resurrection don't line up in the Gospels. Even Ehrman agreed that the authors believed in what they wrote, which is not to say they got it right.I realize that there are theories of how Christian belief began without the resurrection being historical. In the end, IMHO, the only truly plausible reason for the rise of Christian belief is "belief" that God bodily raised Jesus into a new or renewed form of physicality. They may have been wrong in their beliefs, but it is hard to conceive of how they could have gotten a major event like that wrong. The specifics of events before and after the crucifixion were written by fallible humans and as a result they won't line up perfectly. That just isn't a problem for me.My Christian beliefs flow from the idea that God is good, that mankind is called to do all that we can to alleviate suffering and that God resurrected Jesus confirming that we can understand God's nature by looking at what we know of the man Jesus. Everything else I believe about my faith flows from that.

And for the life of me I can't understand how you can believe all that given the utter craziness and total implausibility of the idea. It's baffling.

All that considering that Trump is viewed as the Second Coming?So very highly demonstrably false!