A fun little exercise and a new perspective at Gettysburg

[achilles12604]

http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 3&start=40

This thread was started because I suddenly had an idea. I know from a Christian point of view what it is like to try and prove something which to me, make perfect sense and fits in with the facts, but others deny much and sometimes all of what is put forth simply because it is the Christians viewpoint.

So I have devised a devious scheme. Time to switch and see if the non-theists can defend a position which we all know to be true. I (and any other theist who wants to join) can play the atheist/skeptic and the non-theists have to be the apologists for the validity of the event.


ready . . . here is the topic to be proven:

Prove to me that Lincoln actually gave the Gettysburg address.



I'll get you all started.

I see no reason to believe that the GA was ever given. Even if some speech was given by someone near Gettysburg, I am sure it wasn't the speech that history records. My reasons for this follow:

1) There were many of bloody battles during the civil war. Gettysburg wasn't the beginning nor the end of the war. In fact there really wasn't any reason at all for this particular battle to deserve a speech.

2) I find it unlikely that Lincoln would have presented a speech totally unrehearsed and unplanned. Once again there was no reason for this to happen.

3) The North needed to rally its troops after the battle to take advantage of the their first major victory. The idea of such an inspiring speech would have made a great platform for recruiting and inspiring their soldiers.

4) Other than NORTHERN people, who would have been biased in favor of the ideas put forth in this address, there are no witness accounts for this speech.

5) The supposed copies we have of "drafts" of the speech differ in several places and have major inconsistencies.
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/gadd/gadrft.html

6) The drafts we have come from different sources both of whom were very pro-north in their ideology and these two drafts do not match with one another, suggesting that there was never an original or correct coy to begin with. After all how hard is it to simply copy from one paper to another?

7) These two drafts and the only two which were written anytime near the event in question and modern scholars aren't even sure if one of them was written before or after this supposed speech was given.

8) There isn't very much evidence that Lincoln was ever at Gettysburg. There are no photos of him there. The only photo which supposedly has ever been found of him there was unidentified until 1952, is very vague and doesn't contain anything in it which can positively identify a location or even a time.

9) Lincoln was all the way in Washington just a couple hours after this speech was supposedly given so combining this fact with the fact that there is not physical evidence he was ever at Gettysburg, I see no reason to conclude that he ever was at Gettysburg, much less that he stopped to give a speech at a battlefield with no significance at the time.

10) The details of the speech are not agreed upon. If Lincoln did write it, and if he was alive to write out other copies later on, shouldn't all this be clear?

http://spider.georgetowncollege.edu/hta ... /page6.htm

11) Why would Lincoln be at this site for hours and only give a speech with barely 230 words total? Shouldn't a president be given the majority of the time to speak? Why would his speech be cut so short given the amount of time he was supposedly there? This inconsistency is illogical and can not be reconciled with the facts.


Based on the fact that there are extreamly limited and fairly untrustworthy copies of this supposed speech until well after it was already circulated by northern conspirators and that the motive for the North to concoct such a scheme is easy to see, I submit that President Lincoln never actually gave this speech in Gettysburg at the time he was supposedly doing so.

It was obviously a giant media propaganda by Northern war hawks and politicians.

[Goat]

So what you initally presented as a diary entry and the original letter turned out to be heresay from years later and a holographic representation of something we arn't ever sure existed in the first place. Like James Ossuary, some things which are to good to be true usually are forged.

Really good try though.

You are misunderstanding (perhaps for the purpose of your mental exercise), evaluating the reliablity of evidence.

Points to consider:

1) What is the history of the evidence, and how was it found? In the case of the letters, they were part of Lincoln's personal effects, and were given to the library of congress by Lincoln's heirs. In the case of the Ossuary of James, it was owned by a private collector, and there was no context which it could be examined. It appeared out of no where.

2) Is the evidence able to be examined and tested by objective observers. In the case of both, yes, they could (and that is how the fraud was discovered). In the case of, let's say, the chariot wheels of Ron Wyatt, no objective person was allowed to look at the evidence. In the case of King Tutt's Mummy, it was discovered intact, and removed in a
manner where there were objective observers, and all the evidence could be independantly examined.

3) When it comes to alexander the great, we have independant contemporary observers that recorded events. We have physical evidence that events that are attriubuted to him actually happened. Also,
none of the events recorded were beyond the realm of mundane physical laws.

There also is a difference because in the Gettysburg address, we hve a number of first hand accounts, written within months if not days of the origianal event.

In the case of the Gospels, we have nothing that describes the event from less that 35 (or more) years away, written by people who had theological axes to grind. In addition, the further in time away from the supposed event, the more detailed the account was (something you would expect in the development of a myth).

We are also 2000 years removed from those events. The culture was totally different (oral vs written) and the papyrus used to write on (along with bark and other materials) were much more likely to dissolve and be lost over 2000 years than the modern paper and preservation we have now. That is why I was not comparing the two events. They have nothing in common all the way down to the technology or culture of the people. I simply wante to test the idea of useing your non-theist friend's arguements against a well known historical fac and see if they could defend it. I was not comparing these events outright. I notice you and juliod had to go back to your stomping ground which was off the topic. Lets focus here on what this thread is about.

Besides as I pointed out comparing these documents is like apples and oranges. Really, I should not have been able to raise even a small issue considering the advancements in technology, the written culture of today and the fact this event occured only 120ish years ago. The fact that I was able to raise the exact same complaints that non-theists raise about events 2000 years ago actually surprised me. 2000 years ago they didn't have preservation technology, paper, . . . for crying out loud the vast majority of the people of the entire world were illiterate!

Don't muddle the main discussion. I was talking about Gettysburg. You and Juliod go my point but this particular thread isn't about Jesus or the gospels so lets try and focus here rather than going back over the same old ground.

I think since two non-theists admitted that the way I drew the evidence made it possible for the Gettysburg address to have not been given the way history describes, I have made my point. I am not debating the validity of the Gospels here, so lets let that strawman go for the moment ok?

Yes, there were a lot less written accounts, but it wasn't totally absent. We have written accounts from Philo Judas of ALexandria talking about Pilate. We have his account of the essenes from about the time Jesus is supposed to be around. We have the dead sea scrolls. There might have been a preacher named Jesus from Nazareth, but if there was, he did not make as much of an impact during that timeframe as the Gospels indicate.

[achilles12604]

So what you initally presented as a diary entry and the original letter turned out to be heresay from years later and a holographic representation of something we arn't ever sure existed in the first place. Like James Ossuary, some things which are to good to be true usually are forged.

Really good try though.

You are misunderstanding (perhaps for the purpose of your mental exercise), evaluating the reliablity of evidence.

Points to consider:

1) What is the history of the evidence, and how was it found? In the case of the letters, they were part of Lincoln's personal effects, and were given to the library of congress by Lincoln's heirs. In the case of the Ossuary of James, it was owned by a private collector, and there was no context which it could be examined. It appeared out of no where.

2) Is the evidence able to be examined and tested by objective observers. In the case of both, yes, they could (and that is how the fraud was discovered). In the case of, let's say, the chariot wheels of Ron Wyatt, no objective person was allowed to look at the evidence. In the case of King Tutt's Mummy, it was discovered intact, and removed in a
manner where there were objective observers, and all the evidence could be independantly examined.

3) When it comes to alexander the great, we have independant contemporary observers that recorded events. We have physical evidence that events that are attriubuted to him actually happened. Also,
none of the events recorded were beyond the realm of mundane physical laws.

There also is a difference because in the Gettysburg address, we hve a number of first hand accounts, written within months if not days of the origianal event.

In the case of the Gospels, we have nothing that describes the event from less that 35 (or more) years away, written by people who had theological axes to grind. In addition, the further in time away from the supposed event, the more detailed the account was (something you would expect in the development of a myth).

We are also 2000 years removed from those events. The culture was totally different (oral vs written) and the papyrus used to write on (along with bark and other materials) were much more likely to dissolve and be lost over 2000 years than the modern paper and preservation we have now. That is why I was not comparing the two events. They have nothing in common all the way down to the technology or culture of the people. I simply wante to test the idea of useing your non-theist friend's arguements against a well known historical fac and see if they could defend it. I was not comparing these events outright. I notice you and juliod had to go back to your stomping ground which was off the topic. Lets focus here on what this thread is about.

Besides as I pointed out comparing these documents is like apples and oranges. Really, I should not have been able to raise even a small issue considering the advancements in technology, the written culture of today and the fact this event occured only 120ish years ago. The fact that I was able to raise the exact same complaints that non-theists raise about events 2000 years ago actually surprised me. 2000 years ago they didn't have preservation technology, paper, . . . for crying out loud the vast majority of the people of the entire world were illiterate!

Don't muddle the main discussion. I was talking about Gettysburg. You and Juliod go my point but this particular thread isn't about Jesus or the gospels so lets try and focus here rather than going back over the same old ground.

I think since two non-theists admitted that the way I drew the evidence made it possible for the Gettysburg address to have not been given the way history describes, I have made my point. I am not debating the validity of the Gospels here, so lets let that strawman go for the moment ok?

Yes, there were a lot less written accounts, but it wasn't totally absent. We have written accounts from Philo Judas of ALexandria talking about Pilate. We have his account of the essenes from about the time Jesus is supposed to be around. We have the dead sea scrolls. There might have been a preacher named Jesus from Nazareth, but if there was, he did not make as much of an impact during that timeframe as the Gospels indicate.

Off topic. Start a new thread to discuss this. Lets focus on the evidence of Gettysburg (or the surprising lack of it).

[Goat]

So what you initally presented as a diary entry and the original letter turned out to be heresay from years later and a holographic representation of something we arn't ever sure existed in the first place. Like James Ossuary, some things which are to good to be true usually are forged.

Really good try though.

You are misunderstanding (perhaps for the purpose of your mental exercise), evaluating the reliablity of evidence.

Points to consider:

1) What is the history of the evidence, and how was it found? In the case of the letters, they were part of Lincoln's personal effects, and were given to the library of congress by Lincoln's heirs. In the case of the Ossuary of James, it was owned by a private collector, and there was no context which it could be examined. It appeared out of no where.

2) Is the evidence able to be examined and tested by objective observers. In the case of both, yes, they could (and that is how the fraud was discovered). In the case of, let's say, the chariot wheels of Ron Wyatt, no objective person was allowed to look at the evidence. In the case of King Tutt's Mummy, it was discovered intact, and removed in a
manner where there were objective observers, and all the evidence could be independantly examined.

3) When it comes to alexander the great, we have independant contemporary observers that recorded events. We have physical evidence that events that are attriubuted to him actually happened. Also,
none of the events recorded were beyond the realm of mundane physical laws.

There also is a difference because in the Gettysburg address, we hve a number of first hand accounts, written within months if not days of the origianal event.

In the case of the Gospels, we have nothing that describes the event from less that 35 (or more) years away, written by people who had theological axes to grind. In addition, the further in time away from the supposed event, the more detailed the account was (something you would expect in the development of a myth).

We are also 2000 years removed from those events. The culture was totally different (oral vs written) and the papyrus used to write on (along with bark and other materials) were much more likely to dissolve and be lost over 2000 years than the modern paper and preservation we have now. That is why I was not comparing the two events. They have nothing in common all the way down to the technology or culture of the people. I simply wante to test the idea of useing your non-theist friend's arguements against a well known historical fac and see if they could defend it. I was not comparing these events outright. I notice you and juliod had to go back to your stomping ground which was off the topic. Lets focus here on what this thread is about.

Besides as I pointed out comparing these documents is like apples and oranges. Really, I should not have been able to raise even a small issue considering the advancements in technology, the written culture of today and the fact this event occured only 120ish years ago. The fact that I was able to raise the exact same complaints that non-theists raise about events 2000 years ago actually surprised me. 2000 years ago they didn't have preservation technology, paper, . . . for crying out loud the vast majority of the people of the entire world were illiterate!

Don't muddle the main discussion. I was talking about Gettysburg. You and Juliod go my point but this particular thread isn't about Jesus or the gospels so lets try and focus here rather than going back over the same old ground.

I think since two non-theists admitted that the way I drew the evidence made it possible for the Gettysburg address to have not been given the way history describes, I have made my point. I am not debating the validity of the Gospels here, so lets let that strawman go for the moment ok?

Yes, there were a lot less written accounts, but it wasn't totally absent. We have written accounts from Philo Judas of ALexandria talking about Pilate. We have his account of the essenes from about the time Jesus is supposed to be around. We have the dead sea scrolls. There might have been a preacher named Jesus from Nazareth, but if there was, he did not make as much of an impact during that timeframe as the Gospels indicate.

Off topic. Start a new thread to discuss this. Lets focus on the evidence of Gettysburg (or the surprising lack of it).

You mean, aside from the personal accounts, the newspaper accounts, and Lincoln's hand written speech?

as well as the photo of him being there

[achilles12604]

So what you initally presented as a diary entry and the original letter turned out to be heresay from years later and a holographic representation of something we arn't ever sure existed in the first place. Like James Ossuary, some things which are to good to be true usually are forged.

Really good try though.

You are misunderstanding (perhaps for the purpose of your mental exercise), evaluating the reliablity of evidence.

Points to consider:

1) What is the history of the evidence, and how was it found? In the case of the letters, they were part of Lincoln's personal effects, and were given to the library of congress by Lincoln's heirs. In the case of the Ossuary of James, it was owned by a private collector, and there was no context which it could be examined. It appeared out of no where.

2) Is the evidence able to be examined and tested by objective observers. In the case of both, yes, they could (and that is how the fraud was discovered). In the case of, let's say, the chariot wheels of Ron Wyatt, no objective person was allowed to look at the evidence. In the case of King Tutt's Mummy, it was discovered intact, and removed in a
manner where there were objective observers, and all the evidence could be independantly examined.

3) When it comes to alexander the great, we have independant contemporary observers that recorded events. We have physical evidence that events that are attriubuted to him actually happened. Also,
none of the events recorded were beyond the realm of mundane physical laws.

There also is a difference because in the Gettysburg address, we hve a number of first hand accounts, written within months if not days of the origianal event.

In the case of the Gospels, we have nothing that describes the event from less that 35 (or more) years away, written by people who had theological axes to grind. In addition, the further in time away from the supposed event, the more detailed the account was (something you would expect in the development of a myth).

We are also 2000 years removed from those events. The culture was totally different (oral vs written) and the papyrus used to write on (along with bark and other materials) were much more likely to dissolve and be lost over 2000 years than the modern paper and preservation we have now. That is why I was not comparing the two events. They have nothing in common all the way down to the technology or culture of the people. I simply wante to test the idea of useing your non-theist friend's arguements against a well known historical fac and see if they could defend it. I was not comparing these events outright. I notice you and juliod had to go back to your stomping ground which was off the topic. Lets focus here on what this thread is about.

Besides as I pointed out comparing these documents is like apples and oranges. Really, I should not have been able to raise even a small issue considering the advancements in technology, the written culture of today and the fact this event occured only 120ish years ago. The fact that I was able to raise the exact same complaints that non-theists raise about events 2000 years ago actually surprised me. 2000 years ago they didn't have preservation technology, paper, . . . for crying out loud the vast majority of the people of the entire world were illiterate!

Don't muddle the main discussion. I was talking about Gettysburg. You and Juliod go my point but this particular thread isn't about Jesus or the gospels so lets try and focus here rather than going back over the same old ground.

I think since two non-theists admitted that the way I drew the evidence made it possible for the Gettysburg address to have not been given the way history describes, I have made my point. I am not debating the validity of the Gospels here, so lets let that strawman go for the moment ok?

Yes, there were a lot less written accounts, but it wasn't totally absent. We have written accounts from Philo Judas of ALexandria talking about Pilate. We have his account of the essenes from about the time Jesus is supposed to be around. We have the dead sea scrolls. There might have been a preacher named Jesus from Nazareth, but if there was, he did not make as much of an impact during that timeframe as the Gospels indicate.

Off topic. Start a new thread to discuss this. Lets focus on the evidence of Gettysburg (or the surprising lack of it).

You mean, aside from the personal accounts, the newspaper accounts, and Lincoln's hand written speech?

as well as the photo of him being there

ah thank you . . .

The personal accounts. Please bee specific. I can saw that there was personal accounts of alien abductions but this hardly makes it true. Cite a specific example and we can debate it.

The newspaper accounts. Notice as I said that every one of the newspaper accounts differ. They also contain ZERO pictures of the event even though they were there for hours. These facts are hard to reconcile if the event actually took place as history dictates however if this "press conference" was relayed to the Newspapers after the fact then it becomes easier to understand these discrepancies. This however would be very easy to do if it were in fact a conspiracy put forth by someone high up in the political arena. The motive for leaking this false story would also be there by those people since they needed a boost for their war efforts which had thus far been detrimental.

I think the fact that their stories don't match combined with the fact that there are no newspaper photos of this event which lasted for hours is the most compelling evidence that the newspapers wern't actually there but that they were told the series of events and published them as they were told. The other evidence offers indirect support to this idea.

As for the picture, it wasn't even known until 1952 and then it was discovered in an unrelated stack of papers. It had no identification at the time. There are no features in the photo which positivly ID this event. There are no land features which can ID the geographic location of this photo. Therefore, this single photo is basically useless in proving anything other than Lincoln was somewhere, sometime.

The history of this picture is a lot like the Shourd of Torin (SP) or Stone Hedge. We know it is there but we have no other information on how it arrived, who took it, when, where, why or anything else concerning this photo.

[MrWhy]

Proof of the specifics of any historical event is next to impossible. The weight of evidence is what we have to base judgement on. Evidence is support for the truth of a proposition, and includes anything that makes a proposition more likely and contrary propositions less likely. Some evidence can be listed for almost anything, but a reasonable person will withhold conclusions until a high level of supporting evidence is established. The quality of evidence has to do with the credibility of the facts and the theories. In this case the evidence for his speech is adequate.

There are a couple of points that need to be made.
1. This is an irrelevant debate unless you are an avid history buff. A proof of true or false would affect few of us living today.

2. One reason to accept the evidence that the event occurred as claimed is: No miracles, or other supernatural events are claimed. Nothing out of the ordinary is proposed.

The point of this exercise was to show that when approached with a predisposition, valid historical events can be attacked and shown to never have happened.

Your last sentence is exactly what I am talking about.

Predisposition is expected from all positions in a religious debate. There's not much to discuss on this.

The next part of the statement "valid historical events can be attacked and shown to never have happened" is not reasonable. It implies that all historical events are equally vulnerable to logical attack. That they all have the same level of verification, corroboration, etc. This is obviously not true. While you can attempt to make logical arguments for any proposition, all propositions are all not equally founded. Because of the nature and volume of evidence, some ideas are just harder to defend than others. With this premis flaw the exercise was destined to not meet its goal.

[achilles12604]

Proof of the specifics of any historical event is next to impossible. The weight of evidence is what we have to base judgement on. Evidence is support for the truth of a proposition, and includes anything that makes a proposition more likely and contrary propositions less likely. Some evidence can be listed for almost anything, but a reasonable person will withhold conclusions until a high level of supporting evidence is established. The quality of evidence has to do with the credibility of the facts and the theories. In this case the evidence for his speech is adequate.

There are a couple of points that need to be made.
1. This is an irrelevant debate unless you are an avid history buff. A proof of true or false would affect few of us living today.

2. One reason to accept the evidence that the event occurred as claimed is: No miracles, or other supernatural events are claimed. Nothing out of the ordinary is proposed.

The point of this exercise was to show that when approached with a predisposition, valid historical events can be attacked and shown to never have happened.

Your last sentence is exactly what I am talking about.

Predisposition is expected from all positions in a religious debate. There's not much to discuss on this.

The next part of the statement "valid historical events can be attacked and shown to never have happened" is not reasonable. It implies that all historical events are equally vulnerable to logical attack. That they all have the same level of verification, corroboration, etc. This is obviously not true. While you can attempt to make logical arguments for any proposition, all propositions are all not equally founded. Because of the nature and volume of evidence, some ideas are just harder to defend than others. With this premis flaw the exercise was destined to not meet its goal.

I in no way tried to say that all history was equally unprovable. Don't insert words into my mouth. My point was that certain events (usually events that have no lasting physical impact on the environment) are more difficult to prove especailly as time progresses. A speech or series of speeches falls into this catagory.

The overriding thought for this thread is can a historical event be questioned logically. the answer so far is yes.

[FinalEnigma]

You do realize achilies, that anything could be logically doubted given enough rediculous circumstances dont you? i could just as easily say "i think all the media is in control of the president, and the George W. Bush is not, and never was, president of the united states. all T.V./newspaper are invalid sources, because they are under the control of the president."

We all know that completely absurd. but you cant prove it's wrong ive never seen geroge bush in person, and i could claim that anyone who says he did is under the president's control/payroll. the inability to prove that a historical even occured doesnt mean anything. Given enough parameters, you can 'prove' that anything did, or did not happen

[achilles12604]

You do realize achilies, that anything could be logically doubted given enough rediculous circumstances dont you? i could just as easily say "i think all the media is in control of the president, and the George W. Bush is not, and never was, president of the united states. all T.V./newspaper are invalid sources, because they are under the control of the president."

We all know that completely absurd. but you cant prove it's wrong ive never seen geroge bush in person, and i could claim that anyone who says he did is under the president's control/payroll. the inability to prove that a historical even occured doesnt mean anything. Given enough parameters, you can 'prove' that anything did, or did not happen

Thank you for outlining my point.

[Goat]

So what you initally presented as a diary entry and the original letter turned out to be heresay from years later and a holographic representation of something we arn't ever sure existed in the first place. Like James Ossuary, some things which are to good to be true usually are forged.

Really good try though.

You are misunderstanding (perhaps for the purpose of your mental exercise), evaluating the reliablity of evidence.

Points to consider:

1) What is the history of the evidence, and how was it found? In the case of the letters, they were part of Lincoln's personal effects, and were given to the library of congress by Lincoln's heirs. In the case of the Ossuary of James, it was owned by a private collector, and there was no context which it could be examined. It appeared out of no where.

2) Is the evidence able to be examined and tested by objective observers. In the case of both, yes, they could (and that is how the fraud was discovered). In the case of, let's say, the chariot wheels of Ron Wyatt, no objective person was allowed to look at the evidence. In the case of King Tutt's Mummy, it was discovered intact, and removed in a
manner where there were objective observers, and all the evidence could be independantly examined.

3) When it comes to alexander the great, we have independant contemporary observers that recorded events. We have physical evidence that events that are attriubuted to him actually happened. Also,
none of the events recorded were beyond the realm of mundane physical laws.

There also is a difference because in the Gettysburg address, we hve a number of first hand accounts, written within months if not days of the origianal event.

In the case of the Gospels, we have nothing that describes the event from less that 35 (or more) years away, written by people who had theological axes to grind. In addition, the further in time away from the supposed event, the more detailed the account was (something you would expect in the development of a myth).

We are also 2000 years removed from those events. The culture was totally different (oral vs written) and the papyrus used to write on (along with bark and other materials) were much more likely to dissolve and be lost over 2000 years than the modern paper and preservation we have now. That is why I was not comparing the two events. They have nothing in common all the way down to the technology or culture of the people. I simply wante to test the idea of useing your non-theist friend's arguements against a well known historical fac and see if they could defend it. I was not comparing these events outright. I notice you and juliod had to go back to your stomping ground which was off the topic. Lets focus here on what this thread is about.

Besides as I pointed out comparing these documents is like apples and oranges. Really, I should not have been able to raise even a small issue considering the advancements in technology, the written culture of today and the fact this event occured only 120ish years ago. The fact that I was able to raise the exact same complaints that non-theists raise about events 2000 years ago actually surprised me. 2000 years ago they didn't have preservation technology, paper, . . . for crying out loud the vast majority of the people of the entire world were illiterate!

Don't muddle the main discussion. I was talking about Gettysburg. You and Juliod go my point but this particular thread isn't about Jesus or the gospels so lets try and focus here rather than going back over the same old ground.

I think since two non-theists admitted that the way I drew the evidence made it possible for the Gettysburg address to have not been given the way history describes, I have made my point. I am not debating the validity of the Gospels here, so lets let that strawman go for the moment ok?

Yes, there were a lot less written accounts, but it wasn't totally absent. We have written accounts from Philo Judas of ALexandria talking about Pilate. We have his account of the essenes from about the time Jesus is supposed to be around. We have the dead sea scrolls. There might have been a preacher named Jesus from Nazareth, but if there was, he did not make as much of an impact during that timeframe as the Gospels indicate.

Off topic. Start a new thread to discuss this. Lets focus on the evidence of Gettysburg (or the surprising lack of it).

You mean, aside from the personal accounts, the newspaper accounts, and Lincoln's hand written speech?

as well as the photo of him being there

ah thank you . . .

The personal accounts. Please bee specific. I can saw that there was personal accounts of alien abductions but this hardly makes it true. Cite a specific example and we can debate it.

The newspaper accounts. Notice as I said that every one of the newspaper accounts differ. They also contain ZERO pictures of the event even though they were there for hours. These facts are hard to reconcile if the event actually took place as history dictates however if this "press conference" was relayed to the Newspapers after the fact then it becomes easier to understand these discrepancies. This however would be very easy to do if it were in fact a conspiracy put forth by someone high up in the political arena. The motive for leaking this false story would also be there by those people since they needed a boost for their war efforts which had thus far been detrimental.

I think the fact that their stories don't match combined with the fact that there are no newspaper photos of this event which lasted for hours is the most compelling evidence that the newspapers wern't actually there but that they were told the series of events and published them as they were told. The other evidence offers indirect support to this idea.

As for the picture, it wasn't even known until 1952 and then it was discovered in an unrelated stack of papers. It had no identification at the time. There are no features in the photo which positivly ID this event. There are no land features which can ID the geographic location of this photo. Therefore, this single photo is basically useless in proving anything other than Lincoln was somewhere, sometime.

The history of this picture is a lot like the Shourd of Torin (SP) or Stone Hedge. We know it is there but we have no other information on how it arrived, who took it, when, where, why or anything else concerning this photo.

You are purposely being obtuse, and as such, I am going to refuse to play your game. Frankly, it is a stupid game.

[achilles12604]

No one wants to play with me.

But wait . . . I am saying exactly the same things about this stuff as the non-theists do. I plainly point out the reasons for saying what I do.

Why won't anyone play with me?