Anti-theist

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What "truth" are you talking about? Be specific

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The real one, the one that I think underlies everything is that the Bible isn’t what you want it to be.You want the Bible to be a reliable record and you want it to agree with your beliefs. So you say: But when I quote the more apposite Exodus 33 you simply dismiss it without explanation. And even when you try to deal with Jar’s reference to Genesis (ignoring my quote) all you actually provide is a sermon taking a symbolic interpretation.That does not look like someone who cares about the truth. That looks like someone who is only interested in propping up what they already believe.Edited by PaulK, : Fixed tag

The really funny thing is that Phat could answer your question if he did his homework. It doesn’t take much. But like many Christians he seems allergic to the Bible.(John 1 14-18)

There’s a related phenomenon in martial arts. Some people claim to be able to knock their opponents around without touching them, and there are some impressive displays on video. There is also video of the brutal beatdown which occurred when one of these guys took on an MMA fighter who didn’t believe it.

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If we are talking spirit vs Spirit, the MMA fighter was obviously controlled by one, and it was not the Good One either!

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No, we’re talking about imaginary powers versus fighting skills. The guy waves his hands at his pupils, they go flying. He waves his hands at an MMA fighter and nothing happens. Where do spirits come into it? They certainly aren’t obvious.

Relying on a hostile source is always a questionable decision. And in this case, I think an incorrect one. For instance, I’m sure that many Progressive Christians do worship Jesus as God.Reading between the lines the objections are.1) Progressive Christians want to follow the teachings attributed to Jesus2) Progressive Christians do not use cult-like tactics3) Christians should hate the sin, not the sinner.4) Doctrinal differences are often insignificant.5) They disagree with Conservatives on doctrineSumming these up, it seems to me that the problem is not that Progressive Christians aren’t Christians - it’s that they are.

To continue my comments6) Progressive Christianity isn’t a cult.
(I have to say that I’m surprised you don’t express an agreement with the Progressives on this, Phat. Your “communion” is personal, and if it’s real it shouldn’t be subordinated to the dogma of the group).7) Progressive Christians are Protestant Christians.
(Remember that little thing called the Reformation - a massive upset to the institutions of the time).8) Progressive Christians believe Matthew 5:99) Progressive Christians are Christians
(St. Paul favoured doing without sex, but not without love. Although I really think this comes to “Biblical Christians” wanting to beat others down, while Progressives want to lift them up).10) Progressive Christians have a living faith (James 2:14-18).Maybe you should try browsing this Progressive Christian blog Slacktivist

Since the assertion is obviously false, credentials aren’t really relevant. So long as we don’t know that the Bible IS the literal Word of God its claims would be questionable.But it goes beyond that. First there is the issue of interpretation- can we really say that obvious myths were intended to be understood as literal truth.Then there is the textual evidence. Where an author is identified it’s always a human. There are sections which claim to be God’s words, but the fact of singling those out implies that the rest is not. Not to mention the fact that the Bible is a disparate collection of works, all of which would need to be individually validated.Moreover there are disagreements and errors within the Bible, even where there are no great questions of interpretation.Kruger certainly ought to be aware of all this. If he isn’t that reflects badly on him.And, as a side note, why would we condemn an amateur for being author and director of his own show? Seriously you should drop the silly persecution complex.

I could quibble about some things, but the main one is this:

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Well, it is obvious to me there was a real person named Jesus Christ or likely something similar

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His name would have been Yeshua or Yehoshua, transliterated into Greek as “Jesus” and his followers thought he was the Messiah (translated into “Christus” which became “Christ”)And I outright disagree with this:

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....he made quite an impression on some classical figures, which doesn't tend to happen if you never existed.

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None of those mentioned met Jesus or had any great knowledge of him - all of them but Josephus are primarily dealing with later followers. (The “Chrestus” in Suetonius may indeed, have been someone else - named Chrestus).I still think there was such a person, but I think you’re overstating the evidence.

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I mentioned my sources and noted only Pliny's letter and parts of Josephus were primary. But Pliny does not mention Christ (or any Latin equivalent) in his letter. Josephus is not a primary source if and where he mentions Christ or the equivalent, or many other Biblical characters he mentions. He is a primary source when referring to Jewish customs, traditions, and religion.

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Which only reinforces my point. Jesus did not have any impact on any of your sources,

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In other words, I disagree with your disagreement based upon my scholarship.

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Then perhaps you should show some of this scholarship which shows that Jesus made a major impression on any of the authors you mentioned. You certainly haven’t done that here. Two - Pliny and Suetonius - don’t say anything that depends on Jesus existence at all.

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That observation was noted long ago. The consensus of most Classical historians last I knew indicates Chrestus = Chris

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Who obviously was not present to stir up the Jews in Rome - and died before the expulsion started. If it refers to “Christ” it is talking about the actions of Christians, not Jesus himself. (If it is not referring to some other would-be messiah - since Christus is merely a translation of the Jewish term).

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It appears we have agreement on the conclusion, but a disagreement over whether the evidence is "overstated."

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I haven’t seen any sign of this “impression”. Pliny is only interested in the Christians of his time, Tacitus in condemning the Christian religion, Suetonius in explaining the expulsion of the Jews from Rome. What Josephus actually wrote about Jesus - if anything - is uncertain, but unlikely to have been positive. There’s not much sign of an impact or even real interest. Indeed, as I said above, Pliny and Suetonius provide no support at all for the existence of Jesus.

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Now I see the problem.

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Apparently not. The problem is that - contrary to your assertion - Jesus himself did not make any impression on any of the authors.

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You are stating that the earliest acknowledgements of Christianity does not provide evidence of Christ. I am of the position that these earliest references imply a Christ.

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The earliest acknowledgements would be the genuine Pauline Epistles. And your sources aren’t even as old as the Gospels. If you want evidence of early Christian belief the Gospels are better than any of your sources - being earlier and directly representing (some) of those beliefs. I don’t rate the Gospels as accurate history but as expressions of Christian belief in the latter part of the 1st Century they’re fine (so long as we remember that there were likely a range of other beliefs in the community even then)Further, I don’t think the existence of a group called Christians and worshipping Christ (without even mentioning the name “Jesus”) is much evidence of Jesus in itself. The mythicist idea of Jesus as a heavenly being would work just as well.

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Your claim that Chretus is referring to someone other than Christ was not commonly accepted by historians 20 years ago, and I doubt much has changed since

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My claim is that it quite possibly refers to someone else - and even if it does refer to Jesus it cannot be the case that Jesus personally is stirring up trouble in Rome at that time. He never went there, and died years earlier.Let us also note that this is no indication of Jesus making any impression at all on the author.

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Seems a bit difficult to argue that Tacitus, seeming to supposedly know the details of Christ's demise, somehow is also failing to acknowledge someone named Christ was ultimately behind this event.

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I take the view that Tacitus is likely repeating Christian belief. It fits in with his prejudices and purposes and I see no other likely way he could have got this information. (I repeat also that “Christ” is a title, not a name - so if Tacitus were claiming otherwise he would be wrong).

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That being said, you hinted that your acceptance someone approximately named Jesus Christ was an actual person from sources other than what I stated.

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Indeed, I have already mentioned that the Gospels and the Pauline Epistles are more important sources, being earlier and giving a fuller account of Christian belief. From that account of Christian belief we can infer that there likely was a historical person behind the story.

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What are these sources I am unfamiliar with, so I may judge their veracity according to my readings, however limited they may be.

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Interesting how you got that so wrong when I’d already mentioned those sources.

With regard to canonisation, I’ll comment that the process should not be very reassuring to anyone that wants the Bible to be accurate. The concern with the orthodoxy of the time would lead to reinforcement of that orthodoxy by discarding sources with differing views and for all the concern with authorship they got it quite wrong on a number of occasions.With regard to miracles I’ll say more.

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Science can attempt to study miracles, but since supernatural phenomenon are outside of its axiological scope, it has no tools to either verify or falsify them

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Science can show that the alleged miracle did not occur which would be a falsification. I myself was involved in a discussion here which showed that an alleged prophecy made by a present day preacher was not the miracle it was claimed to be. We might also mention the example of “weeping” statues which may turn out to have purely mundane explanations. Even where that is impossible science may show that there are alternative explanations that do not involve anything supernatural.

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Have you examined your historical method bias and recognized it is built upon a faith assumption?

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Is it? Skepticism about miracle claims seems rational. Miracle claims are not uncommon. Actual miracles seem to be vanishingly rare.

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If the miracle stories were false, why do we not find any documents or evidence from the era of people debunking them?

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That would be more convincing if we had any contemporary account of the events. Or even neutral accounts as close in time as the Gospels. The more so since it seems that some of the miracle stories are likely derived from Jewish scripture rather than events in Jesus ministry. When would these alleged debunkers have heard the stories? what evidence would they be able to obtain at that time? and if they did debunk the story would their reports have survived to the present day?

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If the miracle stories, in particular, the story of the resurrection, were fiction, how would a fictitious story spread as truth with as much potency as the early church did? Surely at least one alleged eyewitness would admit the truth that they made it up, such as what happened with the Manson Family (eventually his followers gave up & turned themselves in).

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That would surely depend on how the story originated. If it started as the mistaken (but appealing) idea that Jesus was somehow still alive. If his followers thought they saw Jesus in crowds or in dreams and believed he was still alive they would not have been consciously inventing a fiction. And if the story got elaborated over they following years and decades (as it did) there would be no point where it can be said that it was “all made up”. And we know that completely fictitious stories such as “NASA’s missing day” or “the Angels of Mons” can spread with rapidity and be taken for fact.

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Why were these stories so compelling to a group of people that they were willing to die by the thousands, for the validity of them?

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I very much doubt that anyone in a position to know the truth of the story died for it. Perhaps you can show otherwise. Those who were not in such a position might die for their belief in it (though I doubt that it was ever that simple) - but obviously that has nothing to do with the truth of the story.

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True! My bad, I did miss this one, apologies. In response, this is another example of selective framing. The fact that the gospels were written decades after Jesus' life is critical evidence for their accuracy not the other way around. There would be people alive who could verify the truth of the events. Most documents from the time period have hundreds of years between the event and the account or earliest known copy.

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You’re already slipping into apologetics. The time span between the events and the earliest known copy is rather different from the time span between the events and the writing. We do have documents written about the time of the events - such as Caesar’s Gallic Wars and, while writing later, Josephus was a participant in the Jewish War he wrote of.The decades would have thinned out the available witnesses and allowed stories to develop (as they certainly did). Also we must consider sources and bias and the Gospels score poorly on both - never identifying their sources and obviously biased. As for checking with the surviving witnesses how would you explain the differences between the Gospels of Matthew and Luke?

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For the same reasons you, PaulK, and AZPaul do. Lol.

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I believe you misread Percy’s question. None of us are trying to debunk stories that will appear 30 years from now.

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That aside, I think what I meant was after the stories were written, we have no documents of anyone compiling counter-evidence or any mention of famous rebuttals to the evidence of the resurrection. Why is that? Perhaps they were destroyed by the church?

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We know that the writings of Celsus and Porphyry were banned by Christian Emperors and are lost to us, save for those parts preserved in the counter-arguments produced by Christian writers. Moreover, we know that Christianity was too obscure to be immediately debunked by Roman or Greek authors. But we don’t know that the earliest resurrection stories went much beyond the list of appearances we find in 1 Corinthians which would be hard to debunk for lack of content (much like the supposed sightings of Elvis Presley).

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Indeed, this is an important question to ask. There are many stories about eyewitnesses, and almost none from eyewitnesses themselves. Father Papias tells us Mark is the eyewitness account of Peter. Luke is not an eyewitness, but he claims to have done really crucial investigative and compilation work with his letter (Luke-Acts), and interviewing of eyewitnesses.

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It’s not clear that Papias claims that Mark was compiled with Peter’s knowledge let alone assistance. The author’s memories of Peter’s stories would not qualify as an eyewitness account - for that it would have to be more directly from Peter. Luke’s claims are less than clear about who he consulted or what sources he use - and apparently could be boilerplate.

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1) The idea that science can verify/falsify all supernatural claims is a faith gap
2) An openness to revelation as a form of epistemology.

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The problem with revelation as epistemology is that it’s private. Believing in claimed revelations is quite different from actually having a revelation.

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I am curious, at what point in Roman history do you think Christ/Christianity actually made any impression on the Romans? I say Claudius and Nero which appears to be unacceptable.

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And again you get it wrong. Your assertion was that Jesus personally had an impact on the authors. Naturally anything less is going to be unacceptable as an example.If you are going to try to demonstrate that Jesus existed because of the inpact he had on classical writers. You need to show that Jesus had an impact. That really shouldn’t be controversial. The impact of later Christians who never knew or met or even saw Jesus from a distance is certainly not the same thing.

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In addition, while Josephus clearly has some later Christian monk insertions, and Suetonius has also come under similar (but less common and apparently less valid charges,) this is the first time I ever heard of anyone ever accusing Tacitus of bearing false witness.

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You haven’t heard it here, either.

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Generally, scholarship in history means one is allowed to speak of a person they never personally met, which seems to be PaulK's standard for existence, Hey, you kids in grammar school, because you did not personally meet Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, or Lincoln you don't personally know they ever existed, therefore you are not allowed to comment on anything they supposedly did.

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Again the question is whether Jesus had the impact you claim he had. The fact that you are grossly moving the goalposts does not indicate that I am being unreasonable at all.I am sorry that you feel the need to resort such dishonest nastiness rather than admitting that you were wrong.

Indeed, even in a British school I encountered the fictitious story of George Washington and the cherry tree.Anglagard’s strawman (it bears no resemblance to anything I claimed) doesn’t even work well as an argument.