In the comment thread of my last post, some of us mentioned that it’s hard for us to understand the point of view of Christians who believe the Bible can be inspired by God, without holding to the doctrine of inerrancy. unkleE left the following comment:
How is it that in everything else in life – whether it be ethics, or politics, relationships, science, history, law, even disbelief – we are willing to make decisions based on non-inerrant evidence and reasoning, but when it is belief in God we require inerrant evidence? I reckon your first thought might be that the stakes are so much higher. But that logic applies to disbelief as well. If we applied that logic, no-one would be an atheist because they didn’t have inerrant knowledge for that conclusion. You would not have any belief either way until you gained inerrant knowledge.
He then suggested that I might want to do a post on this topic (you’re reading it!), but there were also a couple of other comments that I think are worth including here. nonsupernaturalist said this:
My answer would be that ethics, politics, relationships, science, history, and law do not involve supernatural claims. When someone makes a supernatural claim, the standard of evidence required by most educated people in the western world to believe that claim is much, much higher than a claim involving natural evidence.
Let’s look at “history”. If someone tells me that most historians believe that Caesar crossed the Rubicon or that Alexander the Great sacked the city of Tyre, I accept those claims without demanding a great deal of evidence. However, if someone claims that the Buddha caused a water buffalo to speak in a human language for over one half hour or that Mohammad rode on a winged horse to heaven, I am going to demand MASSIVE quantities of evidence to believe these claims.
I think that most Christians would agree with my thinking, here, until I make the same assertion regarding the bodily Resurrection of Jesus. Then Christians will shake their heads in disgust and accuse me of being biased and unreasonable.
No. I am not being biased and unreasonable. I am being consistent. It is the Christian who is being inconsistent: demanding more evidence to believe the supernatural claims of other religions than he or she demands of his own.
And it isn’t just supernatural claims. Most educated people in the western world would demand much more evidence for very rare natural claims than we would for non-rare natural claims.
Imagine if someone at work tells you that his sister just gave birth to twins. How much evidence would you demand to believe this claim? Probably not much. You would probably take the guy’s word for it. Now imagine if the same coworker tells you that, yesterday, in the local hospital, his sister gave birth to twelve babies! Would you take the guy’s word for it? I doubt it.
So it isn’t that we skeptics are biased against Christianity or even that we are biased against the supernatural. We are simply applying the same reason, logic, and skepticism to YOUR very extra-ordinary religious claim that we apply to ALL very rare, extra-ordinary claims, including very rare, extraordinary natural claims.
And Arkenaten said this:
I cannot fathom how you can disregard something like Noah’s Ark as nonsense and yet accept that a narrative construct called Jesus of Nazareth could come back from the dead.
Personally, I feel very much the same way that nonsupernaturalist does. The first part of unkleE’s question that I’d like to address is his statement about nonbelief:
If we applied that logic, no-one would be an atheist because they didn’t have inerrant knowledge for that conclusion.
I think this depends on what one means by “atheism.” I’m not really interested in trying to determine what the official definition of the term is; rather, I’d like to make sure we’re all talking about the same thing within the confines of this discussion. When I refer to myself as an atheist, I simply mean that I don’t believe any of the proposed god claims that I’ve encountered. I’m not necessarily saying that I think no gods exist, period. And if I were to say that, I’d give the caveat that I could easily be wrong about such a belief. This notion of atheism, the position that one hasn’t been convinced of any god claims, is often referred to as “weak atheism” or “soft atheism.” Personally, I think that should be everyone’s default position. No one should be a Muslim, a Hindu, or a Christian until he or she has been convinced that the god(s) of that particular religion exist(s). If we didn’t operate in this way, then we’d all immediately accept the proposition of every religion we encountered, until its claims could be disproven. This would make most of us Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, pagans, and atheists all at the same time. Obviously, that’s ridiculous. So on those grounds, I don’t agree with unkleE’s assertion that we would need inerrant information to not believe something.
Furthermore, when it comes to the claims of Christianity, I can accept or reject them completely independently of what I think about the existence of god(s). Many times, discussions about the evidence for and against Christianity slide into discussions about whether or not a god exists. People bring up the cosmological and teleological arguments. While those discussions can be important, I think they are really just distractions when we’re talking about a specific religion. I’m okay conceding that a god might exist, so I’d rather focus on the pros and cons of Christianity to see if it could possibly be true. After all, it could be the case that God is real, but Christianity is false.
unkleE’s comment started like this:
How is it that in everything else in life – whether it be ethics, or politics, relationships, science, history, law, even disbelief – we are willing to make decisions based on non-inerrant evidence and reasoning, but when it is belief in God we require inerrant evidence?
To piggy-back off the comments I just made, I don’t necessarily require inerrant evidence to believe in God. I think the necessity for inerrancy comes from the kind of god being argued for. The Abrahamic religions teach that there is one God who is supreme. He is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, completely just, etc. I know there are sometimes caveats placed on those labels. For instance, can God create a rock so large that he can’t lift it? Arguments like that illustrate that being all-powerful doesn’t mean he’s outside the laws of logic. And the same goes for all-knowing. It’s sometimes argued that he knows all that can be known… perhaps there are some things that can’t be known? The waters can get muddy pretty quickly, so I think it’s best to refer back to the religion’s source material (the Bible, in this case) to learn more about the characteristics of this god.
In the Bible, God seems to be big on proofs. When God wanted Noah to build an ark, he spoke to him directly. Noah didn’t have to decide between a handful of prophets each telling him different things — God made sure that Noah knew exactly what was required of him. The same was done for Abraham when God wanted him to move into the land of Canaan, and when God commanded him to sacrifice Isaac. When God called Moses to deliver the Israelites from Egyptian bondage, he also spoke directly to Moses. And on top of that, he even offered additional proofs by performing signs for Moses. And when Moses appeared before Pharaoh, God again used signs to show Pharaoh that Moses did indeed speak on God’s behalf. Miraculous signs were used throughout the period of time that the Israelites wandered in the wilderness. And we can fast forward to the time of Gideon and see that God used signs as evidence then as well. Throughout the Old Testament, signs were given to people to show God’s involvement and desires. There are even examples where God punished those who listened to false prophets who hadn’t shown such signs, such as the man of God who listened to the instruction of an old prophet who was actually lying to him. God sent a lion to kill the man (I Kings 13:11-32).
The New Testament is no different. Jesus and his apostles perform all kinds of miracles as evidence of Jesus’s power. When the Pharisees accused Jesus of casting out demons by the power of Satan, he pointed out how nonsensical that would be, showing that such miracles were intended as a display of God’s approval (Matt 12:24-28). And the Gospel of John also argues that these miracles were intended as evidence:
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
— John 20:30-31
Not only did Jesus and his disciples use miracles to make their case, they also appealed to Scripture. Throughout the New Testament, you find references to the Old: “as it is written,” “as spoken by the prophet,” etc. That in itself doesn’t necessarily make the case for inerrancy, but it at least shows that they expected the scriptures to be accurate.
If God cared so much during the time periods talked about in the Bible, why wouldn’t he care just as much today? How can Jesus say that “not one jot or tittle of the law will pass away” if God’s not really all that concerned about how accurate the “jots” and “tittles” are? And yes, like unkleE said in his comment, I do think the fact that the stakes are tremendously high on this question makes it that much more necessary to have good evidence. While the Bible gives us countless examples of those who received direct communication from God or one of his representatives, we find ourselves living in a time when we’re surrounded by competing claims about which god is true, and which doctrines are the right ones. I used to believe that the one tool we had to cut through all that noise was the Bible. It was the one source we could go to to find what God wanted from us. And we could trust that it was his word because of the amazing prophecy fulfillments that it contained and that despite its length and antiquity, it was completely without error. In other words, I thought it was a final miracle to last throughout the ages. And because of its existence and availability, we no longer needed individuals who went around performing miracles and spreading the gospel.
That’s how I saw the world. Of course, since then, I’ve discovered that the Bible doesn’t live up to that high standard. I have many other posts that deal with its various problems, so I won’t try to detail them now. But I simply don’t see how the God portrayed in the Bible, a god who is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, etc, would inspire individuals to write down his incredibly important message to all of mankind, yet not make sure they relay it completely accurately. It doesn’t always agree with itself, it contains historical and scientific mistakes, and sometimes it advocates things that are outright immoral. It’s understandable why a number of people would fail to be convinced by such a book; therefore, it would be impossible for an all-loving and completely just God to punish people when they’re merely trying to avoid the same fate as the man of God who trusted the old (false) prophet.
Finding Truth 
“Historians and experts can only tell us what they think might be historical within the pages of the Bible. They can’t tell us anything about a theoretical deity. So you would still have to take a step of “faith” and pick and choose your own theology and your own version of “God”.”
Sure. The historical evidence can only take us so far. Then we each have to decide what we think ourselves. But a response to not believe is just as much a “faith” response (i.e. going beyond the evidence) as a response to believe. Believers and sceptics alike can choose their own theology!
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Let’s start here shall we, UnkleE?
Is there any verifiable historical evidence whatsoever for anything that is claimed to have occurred to the character, Jesus of Nazareth?
Answer: No.
Is there any historical evidence for the disciples?
Answer: No.
Is there any verifiable historical evidence for any of the the characters ever having interacted with Jesus of Nazareth or the disciples?
Answer: No.
Are there any Roman records for the character Jesus of Nazareth and his disciples?
Answer: No
Wiki.
There is no physical or archaeological evidence for Jesus. All sources are documentary, mainly Christian writings, such as the gospels and the purported letters of the apostles. The authenticity and reliability of these sources has been questioned by many scholars, and few events mentioned in the gospels are universally accepted
Therefore we cannot even establish from an historical perspective that the character, Jesus of Nazareth and his disciples were anything other than works of fiction, especially in light of the claims made about him/them.
So please explain from what historical perspective are you </em basing the claims pertaining to what ''historians'' say. And could you please offer at least a short list of the historians you have ''on hand'' as it were that are on record stating that Jesus of Nazareth his immediate family, and his disciples were genuine historical characters.
Thanks.
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I unkleE,
I don’t have time right this second to respond to some of your other comments, but I wanted to quickly say something about your most recent one, even though I think it was addressed to Dave:
I added the underline, btw. I couldn’t disagree more. Now for those who insist that Jesus never existed and is just a mythological invention, you might have a point. But if you’re talking about the resurrection, the only people exercising faith in that scenario are those who think it actually happened. Why the difference? Because people don’t come back to life, unless the laws of nature are being suspended. That’s a really big deal. If it weren’t, we’d have to maintain that not believing in Santa Claus is also a faith response.
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Right, nate, it seems like it would being saying that if we saw a ball rolling down a hill to an un-obscured cliff edge, that there’d be equal grounds to suspect the ball will either fly upward or fall down the cliff.
But we all know how gravity works. We all know how balls with a downward inertia act, so it’s stupid to predict the ball will fly away. Predicting the ball will fly away is in no way on equal footing as the prediction that the ball will fall down the cliff.
Does it take faith to think the ball will fall? …well, if that’s faith, it’s certainly much more rooted in knowledge and reason than the other options. So call it faith if you like, but the faith that the ball will fly away is based on… hope, ignorance, drugs, whatever else,and depends much, much less on reason, experience and logic.
right?
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Unklee
I think you overstate the scholarly support it has. For starters, I think the Minimal Facts argument overstates some of the scholarly agreement. There is a substantive difference between A) apostles experiencing physical appearances, B) apostles experiencing “visions” (like Paul), and C) apostles claiming they had experienced appearances. The MF argument does not make a distinction. But beyond that, the MF argument is not based in scholarly support for the resurrection, but instead scholarly support for elements that proponents argue are best explained by a resurrection. This is not the same as saying scholars support the historicity of the resurrection.
I thoroughly enjoy Lowder’s work and I have a great deal of respect for the respectful way that he considers arguments and opponents. That said, I think he pretty persuasively dismantles the pro-resurrection arguments in that piece.
I am conflicted on this. I think it is ungracious to suggest that Flew’s views were due to age and an enfeebled mind, but I struggle to reconcile what he said with some other facts. He did not write the book. It was ghost-written for him. He clearly did not understand at least some of what was included. As the NYT’s Mark Oppenheimer wrote, “There were words in his book, like “abiogenesis,” that now he could not define.” Actually, just read Oppenheimer’s article for an explanation of my skepticism.
My source is Habermas. I specifically asked him about this and he confirmed it. I understand you have no way to verify whether I’m telling the truth, of course — I could provide Nate with some indirect evidence privately — but you can verify this by trying to find the database or complete list published anywhere. You will not find it. I would add that his co-author, Mike Licona, also called it (circa 2010) an “unpublished bibliography” that was “in a roughly formatted Microsoft Word document more than six hundred pages in length…”
I should note two things. First, I quite like Professor Habermas. He is a friendly, interesting fellow and I think he takes a far more responsible approach to the argument than many of the people who use his arguments. Second, I am not arguing that he does not have a list of 1400 sources (or “well over 2000 sources” or “in the neighborhood of 3,400 sources”, depending on the telling). I think it is very likely he has compiled this. However, without access to the data itself, we have no way of knowing what his methodology is, who counts as a relevant source on the topic (historians? theologians? textual critics? seminarians?), how clearly an opinion has to be asserted to count one way or another, or any number of other factors.
Yes, I read that piece — and almost everything else on his website! — a couple years ago. I’m not sure what a peer reviewed journal has to do with my arguments, though. The article was a literature review that primarily focused on perhaps a few dozen sources. Peer review doesn’t imply checking the vast database, which he only briefly mentioned. In fact, he covers the research trends through “a sample interpretation…from the works of two representative scholars…”
How many biblical scholars are non-Christians? I can think of a few, but very few. Dallas Theological Seminary, Liberty University, Baptist Theological Seminary, Biola and dozens/hundreds of other religious schools churn out graduates by the thousands. There are secular (neither for nor against) schools, but there are no schools that take a theological stance against the resurrection in the manner that Christian schools take a theological stance for the resurrection. Heck, some of these scholars (or “scholars”, in some cases) are contractually required to maintain a belief in a literal resurrection. Some scholars would lose their jobs if they suggested that the Bible contained so much as a single error. Some, like Mike Licona and Peter Enns, have lost their jobs over such differences!
Beyond that, I don’t think it is methodologically possible to argue for the resurrection on an academic basis. I think you are taking the academic argument about component elements — the crucifixion, the tomb, the belief in appearances — to mean that scholars argue for the historicity of the resurrection itself. But the MF argument only says scholars argue for the individual elements, not that those scholars accept the resurrection conclusion as an academically established historical fact. Those are separate claims.
I believe many/most scholars would argue that they believe in the resurrection without arguing that it can be established on a historical basis. Belief in the resurrection is a matter of theology and faith, not evidence.
I think that is reasonably likely. I think it is probably more likely that Jesus’ body was thrown in a mass grave and the tomb story was a later development, but I don’t think burial in a tomb is implausible. As far as visions, that covers a wide range of things, from dreams to hallucinations to physical appearances. I think it’s entirely plausible that most scholars believe at least one or two of his followers had some sort of dream or hallucination, but I think proponents of the MF argument try to extrapolate too much from that and leave people with the impression that scholars agree that all of Jesus apostles physically “saw” a resurrected Jesus.
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Is it fair to expect inerrancy from the Bible?
If the Bible claims that “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness”—then yes, it is fair to expect (and demand) that said God deliver its message with 100% accuracy.
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The bodily resurrection of Jesus claim does not sound strange to persons who have grown up in Christian areas of the world like the US and Australia because it is part of our culture. But ask an educated person in Japan what they think of the claim that a dead man came back to life sporting a superhero-body that could teleport between cities and walk through locked doors and they will look at you like you are an absolute idiot.
Dear Christian: Substitute any other spectacular supernatural claim for the bodily resurrection of Jesus in the Jesus story and you will see just how much a stretch of the imagination this claim really is. Regardless of what UnkleE and other Christians claim, it is NOT a reasonable conclusion to believe that this event happened!
Let’s substitute the original Resurrection story with this claim: Four books written several decades after Jesus’ death all claim the following: the body of Jesus is placed in Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb. On Sunday morning, the women and all eleven of the disciples show up to the Tomb and find a group of little green Martians prying away the rock slab in front of the tomb, they enter the tomb, then a few minutes later, they walk out with the body of Jesus, and finally, they and the body slowly levitate up into the spaceship, to fly off at the speed of light.
Another book written a few decades later claims that the space ship, with the little green Martians made a quick stop in a nearby city before flying off to Mars. As the door to the space ship opens, a supernatural Jesus walks out in a glowing white robe, gives the Great Commission to 500 people, and then the spaceship flies off never to be seen again. The book even lists the names of these 500 witnesses and their addresses!!! All other evidence presented for the Jesus Story is the same.
Would you believe that this Martian body snatching happened?
Of course not.
So why do you believe a story that another type of non-earthly beings, called “angels”, took the body or at least were present when the body of Jesus supernaturally exited his sealed tomb????
It is a tall tale.
It is NOT reasonable to believe this story.
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Arkenaten
The textual record is evidence. It is not proof, but it is evidence.
You don’t seem to understand how the field of history works, what kind of evidence we have for many historical figures or what kind of evidence we should expect to have.
There are a ton of historical figures for which we don’t have contemporaneous historical writings or physical evidence. Major figures. People who were famous and likely to have been written about. There are a ton of historical figures we only know about because of records from many centuries later that reference something they supposedly wrote. Why would you expect more for a mere rural preacher who had a few followers and got killed?
Why would you expect us to have Roman records of him? This, in particular, is ridiculous. How many Roman records do we have of people who lived in Judea in the first few decades of the 1st century? How many Roman records do we have of individuals who were executed in that region? Please, provide us with the extensive Roman records from which you think Jesus is missing.
Or let’s try another example. Are you familiar with the three major Jewish festivals — Shavuot (aka: Pentecost or “festival of weeks”), Passover and Sukkot — for which Jews from all over traveled to Jerusalem? On those holidays, the population of Jerusalem grew massively, like a mid-size US city hosting the Super Bowl, except it lasted for up to a week. These festivals were the major events for Jerusalem and a central focus of Jewish life.
Now, can you provide me with historical evidence for each of these events that matches the kind of evidence you want for the historicity of Jesus, who was just one of the tens or hundreds of thousands of people who traveled to Jerusalem? Can you provide me with details of the festivals in 15 CE? What about 32 CE? Surely, if you think there should be contemporaneous records of some minor Jewish preacher who was only active for 1-3 years, then you must believe there are contemporaneous records of the major events in the largest city in the region for each of those years, right?
Of course, there are not. We have a very few mentions of the festivals, very few actual/reliable details and nothing about most of the specific events.
That is how history works. We piece together what is most likely from a very limited historical record. The fact that we have numerous textual records of a 1st century Judean preacher named Jesus within 70 years of his death is pretty strong evidence for his historicity.
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Jon said, “…contemporaneous records of some minor Jewish preacher who was only active for 1-3 years.”
The problem is that the Gospels do not claim that Jesus was a minor Jewish preacher. The Gospels claim that Jesus stood Galilee and Judea on their heads, brought the entire region to near revolt, was hailed as the Jewish king by throngs of thousands as he entered Jerusalem riding on a colt, and his trial caused the mighty Pilate to tremble in fear of the seething Jewish mobs at his door.
Yet Philo nor any other contemporary said one word about ANY of this.
I believe that Jesus existed, but not as the Gospels describe him. The Gospels are not reliable sources for more than the very bare essentials of Jesus. He lived, was an apocalyptic preacher, and was crucified by the Romans. That is about it.
But that he rose from the dead and flew off into outer space???
No way.
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NS, you write so much that I agree with! And this latest comment is no exception. I’ve felt for a long time that Yeshua actually existed and was as you described him. I think his followers were just so impressed with his message (plus the fact that during the times of the bible extraordinary claims were made about a lot of things), that they embellished and added to his activities in order to persuade their fellow countrypeople (;-)) he was truly “God-Sent.” Then Paul grabbed the ball and ran and Voila! We have Christianity (Pauline-style).
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I align with both Jon and Gary regarding the man Jesus. I think they’re hitting on two different sides of the same coin.
I think there’s evidence that Jesus was a real guy, and the gospels and earlier believers serve as that evidence, but there being adequate evidence to think there was a man named Jesus, who was known by some a a healer or guru of some sort, is quite different than suggesting that evidence supports what some people actually believed about him, especially when some of those things defy known laws of physics and biology, as well as common sense – like a ball that’s rolling down a hill flies away instead of falling down the cliff at the end of the hill, no one would think that because it goes against everything we know and have witnessed.
But to be fair to Ark, this evidence isn’t the same a proof, but then like Jon pointed out, expecting certain proof could be a bit unreasonable, depending on the circumstance. And I don’t think “Jesus the Son of God” was a real entity, I just think “the man Jesus” was a real guy who got turned into a legend.
To believe the ball flew away like a UFO would take considerable evidence and proof. So maybe to believe that a guy came back to life and flew away should require something more than the old claims of a book which were written in superstitious times… because we also know that superstitious folks believe all sorts of weird stuff.
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Think about this folks: There is no evidence for the existence of Martians or angels other than the claims of a few wild-eyed fanatics.
I suggest we not believe any stories that claim to involve either one of these extraterrestrials.
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Well that’s interesting, and I agree, but it makes me think about the possibility of extraterrestrial life… Isn’t it possible?
Isn’t it possible that there could be life somewhere else in this vast universe with hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars…
It starts to seem likely that there could be. But even with that likelihood, i’d still suspect that most of us, even if we all agreed it were not only possible, but likely that extraterrestrial life were real, we’d all also very likely not believe in an alien abduction story, and we all probably think UFO sightings are just misidentified human aircraft or swamp-gasses and venus.
Maybe there’s a likelihood of angels, gods and demons, even though there’s no spiritual realm we can look at like we have for stars in space, but even if they were potentially likely, there’d still be a need for actual evidence and proof, just like we’d require for Aliens.
I feel like this is pretty straight forward and easy to grasp. I think asking for better evidence, beyond the wild claims of unknown ancient people, is consistent with regular, every day skepticism of any bold claim.
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Anything is possible, William. The real question is: Is it probable?
Is it possible that unicorns, flying-spaghetti monsters, leprechauns, and little, green, antennae-toting Martians exist? Sure. Is it probable they exist? No.
Ditto with angels and resurrected dead preachers.
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Nonsupernaturalist
First, did Philo write about minor preachers like Jesus? I’ve never heard a compelling argument for why we should expect Philo to have written about Jesus. By the time Philo died (around 45-50 CE), the early Christian movement was still pretty small. Paul had not even begun to write his letters. So far as I can tell, Philo’s work only gets brought up because people don’t realize we have almost no other textual records from that region and period. It would be like people in the year 4000 CE having a few hundred editions of the Cleveland Plains-Dealer newspaper and saying some preacher in Kansas City must not have existed because he didn’t show up in the extant texts of the Cleveland Plains-Dealer.
Here is the important point: We’re talking about the historical Jesus, not the theological Jesus. Historical Jesus studies absolutely do not take the Gospels at face value, any more than historians take at face value the claims that Vespasian miraculously healed the blind or that Tiberius accurately prophesied the reign of Emperor Galba. There were multiple, independently attested claims by credible historians for each of those, but historians have no problem discarding things like that and gleaning what is likely to be accurate information from those records.
The historical jesus of scholarship was exactly what you describe — a Jewish man who “lived, was an apocalyptic preacher, and was crucified by the Romans…” I would only really add that we can also say that the historical Jesus had followers who reinterpreted his life and his message after his death and gradually evolved from a sect of Judaism into a separate religious group called “Christians.” That’s the pretty minimal historical Jesus that scholars think we can be reasonably confident about. There are other things we can say are likely — he was probably from Galilee, he probably caused a disturbance in Jerusalem, his followers probably thought of him as the Messiah (which, remember, was a priestly or conquering King/General type of figure who would help the Jews overthrow their oppressors) prior to his death and his message probably resembled some of the things attributed to him. But the historical Jesus that scholars agree on is NOT the larger-than-life Jesus of the synoptic gospels and definitely not the divine figure of the Gospel of John.
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That is how history works. We piece together what is most likely from a very limited historical record. The fact that we have numerous textual records of a 1st century Judean preacher named Jesus within 70 years of his death is pretty strong evidence for his historicity.
Numerous? Such as ?
Josephus? Until fairly recently his Testimonium was considered entirely fabricated and many still think so.
Tacitus …. heresay and he is likely quoting tradition.
What else? Er ….
Oh, I know … The Gospels!
You will have noted, I hope, I did not refer to some scruffy little sit of a Jewish eschatological preacher who may or may not have existed, and quite frankly ( ”my dear”) I could not give a damn, but the biblical character, the Lake Tiberius pedestrian, Jesus of Nazareth and his band of merry men and also his mum and dad and brothers and sisters.
I wonder hoe much evidence there is for this half wit?
I’ll take a guess and say about as much as there is for Moses.
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Jon,
We are agreed. Philo most likely did not write about Jesus because Jesus was most likely an insignificant person during his life time. The very influential and well-known Jesus of the Gospels is most likely a legend.
My point is that the fact that Philo says nothing about a very influential and well-known Jesus is yet another reason why we should not believe as historical fact any supernatural claims about this first century man. If the Gospel authors were willing to turn a nobody into a major somebody, why should we not suspect that they also threw in some supernatural tall tales to make him even MORE of a “somebody”?
Tall tales beget even more tall tales.
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Dude. We went over this just a few months ago. Paul, gMark, Q (or whatever the source material was for gMatthew and gLuke), Josephus, Clement and gJohn. All 1st century (although, gJohn is borderline).
All of them mention Jesus. Before you object or move the goalposts again, please re-read that thread. I addressed your objections at some length there.
You obviously do give a damn about some minor Jewish eschatological preacher, because you keep arguing about him. Unfortunately, you criticize the scholarly view of Jesus without actually understanding who the historical Jesus is. If you want to argue with fundamentalists, then do that. But stop pretending that the historical Jesus must either be a myth or exactly the picture painted by the Gospels. That is as foolish from atheists as it is from Christians.
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I agree, 100%. The historical Jesus was the basis for the Gospel Jesus — we can even seen that development in the gospels — but early Christians clearly, demonstrably created legendary stories about him. Some of it was just straight up lies, some of it was probably more gradual embellishment, and perhaps some of it was about telling stories to illustrate points (like the apocryphal George Washington Cherry Tree story). All of this is common and a large part of the job of historians is to figure out what is history and what is fable.
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I understand perfectly, thanks , Jon.
And perhaps you would like to offer a short list of historians who will back your claim there is verifiable evidence for the character, Jesus of Nazareth.
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”I couldn’t disagree more. Now for those who insist that Jesus never existed and is just a mythological invention, you might have a point. But if you’re talking about the resurrection, the only people exercising faith in that scenario are those who think it actually happened.”
Hi Nate, I think this is well worth discussing further. As before, I’m not intending to discuss the rights and wrongs of our disagreement about whether the resurrection actually happened, but just how you are framing the question, which I think is incorrect.
We both agree that there are certain facts – that the New Testament records certain events, that historians have assessed those records and come to certain conclusions about them, and, yes, that dead men don’t normally come back to life.
Now in moving from those facts to my belief that Jesus was resurrected, I consider a whole lot of other factors, e.g. that I think there is evidence that God exists, that I believe Jesus told the truth, that I think the evidence suggests that miracle healings still happen sometimes today, etc. But then I must still take a step beyond that information and decide that I believe the resurrection happened. We can call that step beyond the factual evidence “faith”, “belief”, “madness”, whatever, but we both recognise it is there.
Now all I am saying is that you are doing the same thing. The facts are the same for you as for me, and they cannot of themselves prove what happened. (Facts, of course, can’t do anything, they just sit there!) But you have taken the step of concluding that Jesus didn’t rise, because (presumably) you believe the christian God doesn’t exist, you don’t trust that Jesus told the truth, you don’t believe miracle healings happen at all today, etc. So we can call that decision of yours “belief” or “common sense” or “blindness” or whatever, but in principle it is the same.
We both hold a belief (in the philosophical sense) about the truth of certain propositions that cannot be proved from the evidence. If we didn’t have any belief about that proposition, we’d say “I don’t know”.
Now you say “Because people don’t come back to life, unless the laws of nature are being suspended.” Leaving aside philosophical questions about whether the laws of nature are descriptive or prescriptive, that statement is not relevant, because (1) I am saying that God can easily do something contrary to what normally happens, and (2) we are not talking about a normal person but a person I believe was the son of God. Your view on the improbability of the event is coloured by your views (which cannot be established from facts alone) about many other things.
So we come back to the same factors. We have different views on the resurrection in part because we have different views on whether God exists or not, whether Jesus was son of God or not, etc. We both draw a conclusion beyond what can be proved. You may think yours is the default position, but I say that is because you are an atheist – it isn’t the default position for a theist.
I have taken up this matter because I think some atheists commit a logical fallacy in an attempt to win the argument by default. They try to build a case that their view is totally logical and factual, and the christian view is totally faith based and evidence-free. I am saying this is incorrect – both views are composed of belief and evidence.
Now I’m not saying you think like other atheists, but I think the point is worth making. Just as you initially said you had no belief in a God, but it turned out you actually had quite a strong negative belief about God, so I think it is true here. We all have beliefs, more or less justified, and trying to say one “side” doesn’t is a misunderstanding. Thanks.
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Since we can’t prove it didn’t happen you are saying there is an equal argument that it could have happened.
I call this delusional . Sorry
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Once again, UnkleE cannot fathom just how far fetched his belief system really is because UnkleE’s subjective, internal feelings and perceptions tell him that Yahweh/Lord Jesus is very much alive and well, living somewhere within his very body. Belief in the Resurrection is therefore a very reasonable, logical conclusion.
However, UnkleE has yet to prove the existence of Yahweh. He can talk about “God” all he wants, but until he proves that Yahweh is God, is argument falls flat.
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Hi unkleE,
Thanks for the reply. I think I see what you’re saying, but I still disagree.
We both agree that God is hidden (if he exists). He can’t be demonstrated to exist. You believe that he occasionally intervenes in this world, but it’s not to the degree that it resolves questions about his existence. At least, I think this is how you view it — let me know if I’ve misunderstood.
You believe that miracles sometimes happen. But these also can’t be demonstrated.
On the other hand, we don’t have those same kinds of questions about natural phenomena. We know that things typically (or always?) operate via natural law (descriptive, as you said).
To me, that means that natural explanations should always have precedence. That’s why we don’t believe that Vespasian performed miracles (as Jon mentioned) or that Merlyn performed magic. Maybe we’re wrong about those things, but it’s very unlikely. And the same is true for Jesus’s resurrection. Perhaps it really did happen — but it’s the most unlikely thing that could have happened.
I don’t think our two positions on this can be equated. I agree with you that I’m drawing a conclusion about the event, just as you are. But I don’t agree that my conclusion requires faith, any more than it would require faith for me to think that the sun will “rise” in the morning. It’s just an acceptance of the natural order, which has been demonstrated to us over and over.
This is probably an issue we won’t agree on, but I hope this at least helps explain why I differ from you on this one.
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