Tribute Thread For the Recently Raptured Faith

History does not deal in truths, it deal in facts. What is a historical truth? So books that deal with and present historical facts that can be corroborated are not as important books that claim to present history, but can be shown to have no corroborating evidence?

I am quite sure that there are historical accounts of the Viet Nam war in both Washington and Hanoi. I have a hunch that they won't be in full agreement even though they both present their view of historical accounts.All historical accounts are prone to human biases and motivations. When read years later we can form our subjective conclusions as to their accuracy. You are twisting the meaning of what I said. My point is simply that religious texts have a greater effect for good or evil today regardless of corroborating evidence.

The fact is there is no independent corroborating historical evidence of the existence of a Jesus Christ outside of the bible. All future mentions of this character are tied the gospels. Nowhere else in the historical record does this person exist. The character is as much a myth as Prester John and William Tell.
Even Paul does not seem to have known anything about a historical Jesus. Then again why would he know anything about the gospels as his writings(or maybe more accurately, the writings attributed to him) were written decades before the gospels.
If a document is to be accepted as legitimate historically, then the provenance of the document must be verified. Not only can the provenance of the gospels not be verified, there is no evidence of who even authored them. The conflicts and inconsistencies between them show that nothing in them can be relied on as being factual.

The first part of your response does not even address anything I said.
What are historical "truths"?Of course different sides will have different I interpretations, but these different versions will in fact corroborate the basic underlying facts. Nothing corroborates your bible. My response is a plain reading of what you stated. If you feel it is twisted maybe you should revisit what you wrote. Good and evil is a loaded phrase. Full of judgement. I agree a lot of people put more stock in religious texts. I disagree that that is a good thing also it does not make them more "true".

How they are "meant" or what they purport to be is irrelevant. I have a book that purports to be the "true" biography of James Bond. Jim Hawkins was an eyewitness to the events in Treasure Island. It is common practice in fiction to create elaborate back stories about how the story came to light: one survivor managed to make his way back through the jungle, a message was found in a bottle, etc. Pretending that the story is true doesn't make the story true. It doesn't matter what they intended. All that matters is whether or not the material is factual - and there's no reason to think that it is.

You're 100% wrong. Do you know what "objectively" means at all? You should have said, "The problem with reading the Bible SUBJECTIVELY is that you yourself decide what is and is not possible." Maybe that should be part of it - but the most important part of analyzing it objectively is whether or not it matches reality. And since there is no objective evidence that the "Holy Spirit" exists, you can not objectively conclude that the passage is true. How is that "tainted"? The conclusions are correct. No. It doesn't "presuppose" any such thing. It concludes that your stories about God and Jesus are fiction. Why do you keep repeating that same lie? I have told you more than once that I started out believing. I believed the same nonsense that you believe until I found out that it isn't true. That doesn't answer the question. The question was in response to your Message 1621, "A random guy in Canada who hangs out at the library has nothing apart from his intuitive wisdom with which to challenge the Biblical scholars."We're talking about Bible scholars here, not the Bible authors. Why would you trust them more than yourself or myself, especially when you can see that their doctrines don't fit what the Bible actually says? Reality does trump belief. What part of that do you not understand?

Well then you are simply wrong about reality. Your conclusions are premature.

So you admit that your only argument is, "Nuh uh." What does that mean? No conclusion is ever final. There is always room for new evidence to tweak the conclusion, or even overthrow it completely.The problem with your conclusion is that it is final. If there was evidence that falsified your conclusion, you still wouldn't let go of it. That's why your opinions on reality don't count for much.

Not true and I think you know it is not true. You have been on this forum long enough to know that this has been argued ad nauseum. None of the people who wrote down the gospel stories or Paul(and those that pretended they were Paul) were eyewitnesses. That being said Ringo was not talking about that. He was talking about the dishonest and manipulative biblical "scholars". You do realize that the vast majority of biblical "scholars" do not have any higher level education outside of biblical studies. They are not trained as historians or linguists or textual analysts. All they are trained in is apologetics. All fields of scholarship and science are in a constant state of change and flux as new information emerges. Biblical "scholarship" remains rooted in the past with almost no change.Edited by Theodoric, : Spelling and punctuation

Replied to wrong postEdited by Theodoric, : No reason given.

I never did get an explanation about what a historical "truth" is. Any chance you could define it and give some examples? I would like to run this whole historical "truth" thing by some people I know that are professionals in the field. See their take, but I have to know what it means.

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You do realize that the vast majority of biblical "scholars" do not have any higher level education outside of biblical studies. They are not trained as historians or linguists or textual analysts.

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You might want to see the linguistic, stylistic, and grammatical arguments about Paul's letters.And way back in the 1940s, the vocabulary of Paul's letters were compared to vocabulary used in other Greek documents from different decades.The Jesus Seminar recently used advanced grammatical, stylistic, syntaxic, vocabulary, etc. analysis to determine that Paul definitely did not write I Timothy, II Timothy, Titus, and II Thessalonians.Daniel Wallace is a fundamentalist and he can read Greek fluently PLUS is an expert on Greek. He addresses the serious matter of the Pastoral Epistles not matching Paul's writing style in any way (including the strange use of Latin prepositions).The issue of being able to use computer analyses to determine the issues of Pauline authorship has been talked about for many decades.Edited by LamarkNewAge, : No reason given.

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None of the people who wrote down the gospel stories or Paul(and those that pretended they were Paul) were eyewitnesses.

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I am wondering if you are saying Paul did not exist at all (as opposed to saying there are genuine and pseudo Pauline Epistles)?Are you saying the all 13 of the Pauline letters (those taken by scholars to be "genuine" and "forged") were not written until 100 A.D., like a few cranks do? Is this some allusion, on your part, to the same cranks who assume that the Pauline theological disputes with the Jewish Christians (like James and/or the various Jewish Christian sects) were all a fake literary invention to make things sound realistic? "Unhistorical conflict" arguments come from the deniers, so is this the meaning tucked in your quote?I still feel the New Testament documents were generally "early" because they don't quote each other (pretty much every New Testament "scripture" quotation is from the Old Testament), and they mostly don't bear the mark of later supplements to an existing body of (Christian) scripture. They ("they" being the various sides referenced in the arguments and controversies in the New Testament) don't bear the mark of being a fictional invention from a small, connected, unified group of forgers. The evidence FROM THE LATE TEXTS seems to fit an earlier historical situation (albeit with an ongoing post 1st century debate between the various schools and camps), though the (non Pauline Epistle part )New Testament seems to be LATE-first century/early second, and increasingly from a more unified (in theological circles)group of forgers.(the documents might be late and forged, but the sides referenced seem genuine and from an earlier period)The "false conflict" argument is really bad (considering the fact that these "Paul/Jesus did not exist" peddlers claim to be, somehow, possessing an advanced historical methodology). Hardly consistent with the results of a decent historical/textual analysis.The sorely-lacking-decent-scholarship wing of Biblical studies is from the deniers (cranks).Edited by LamarkNewAge, : No reason given.Edited by LamarkNewAge, : No reason given.

I just mean what I write. You should not read any more or any less into anything I write.Edited by Theodoric, : Spelling

Nothing you wrote debunks what I stated. Seemed more like just random statements than an argument.