A really, really, REALLY simple concept

[atheist buddy]

Eyewitness testimony: When a person writes down what he saw/heard/tasted/smelled/touched

Hearsay testimony: When a person writes down what another person told him


Here's an example of eyewitness testimony: "I heard the thunderstorm last night"

Here's an example of hearsay tesitmony: "My wife tells me there was a thunderstorm last night, although I slept through it and didn't hear anything".


Eyewitness testimony: I saw Steve kill Joe

Hearsay: When we talked to Steve, he told us that he killed Joe


Eyewitness: I went to Jesus's tomb and it was empty

Hearsay: Somebody told me that he went to Jesus's tomb and it was empty


Eyewitness: This book is an original document in which I wrote what I saw and heard

Hearsay: This book is a copy of a document in which somebody else wrote what they saw and heard. You cannot see the original, but trust me (even though you don't know who I am), it's pretty much the same as the original.


Question for debate: Is anybody even slightly confused about the fact that we have no eyewitness accounts of ANYTHING relating to Jesus's life?

[David the apologist]

.

You can choose only to believe the autographs of eyewitness testimony. But in that case, you've effectively cut yourself off from the periods in history when God (if He exists and intervenes in history) would have been most likely to be active - those of greatest antiquity.

Why do you claim that God (if he exists) would most likely have been active in antiquity?

Can you substantiate that claim?

Could it be that god STORIES were more abundant or more widely circulated / believed in ancient times -- and that those stories are less accepted in modern times with increased literacy, education, knowledge, etc?

Because the earlier He intervenes, the more people will come to know Him. Intervening today leaves far fewer people in a position to come to know Him than if He had intervened 2000 years ago - or even earlier. Which is why I think that any religion claiming to have the real truth should be able to trace its origins to the beginning of writing.

This has nothing to do with the alleged gullibility of the ancients (and even if it did, that gullibility would most definitely not have extended to anything like a virgin birth or a resurrection).

Why do you write things that are irrefutably not true? Ancient history is riddled with myths of virgin births. Almost any hero worth mentioning was born of a virgin. To say that bronze and iron age people would "most definitely" not be prone ot believing in virgin birth stories, is like saying that 6 year olds would "most definitely" not believe in Santa.

I mean, there are people NOW, in the age of the Higgs-Boson, with college educations, with internet access, who believe in virgin births, and you wish to tell me that bronze age nomads and hamlet dwellers would "most definitely" not believe in virgin births if it weren't true? If that's the case, then Buddha was "most definitely" born of a virgin,

Actually, Siddhartha's mother was married at the time when she conceived him. Married people generally aren't virgins, though I freely admit that I'm utterly unfamiliar with the cultural traditions of fourth century BC Nepal.

as was Isis,

Actually, I've never heard that one before. Perhaps you meant Horus, Isis' son?

At any rate, Horus was hardly virgin born either. He was conceived as his mother engaged in necrophilia with her husband Osiris' mummified corpse.

That being said, we have moved at this point from the realm of historical figures into the realm of mythical ones. The Greeks believed that the gods used to be active in some long-lost golden age, but were not active anymore. I'm not sure if that holds true for the Egyptians as well, but it's at least food for thought for anyone who wants to draw parallels between the claims made about the historical figure Jesus of Nazareth and the claims made about pagan deities.

Hercules

Actually, Hercules was born after Zeus impregnated Alcmene. Zeus's wife, Hera, got so upset about this act of infidelity on Zeus' part that she tried to kill Hercules with a pair of poisonous snakes. If Zeus had impregnated Alcmene without being unfaithful to Hera, I doubt she would have had a problem.

Once again, though, I'm not entirely sure how this is relevant when we're dealing with what was said about a historical, flesh-and-blood individual.

and Alexander the Great,

Ah, you bring us back into relevant territory! Marvelous!

However, Alexander was not considered to be born of a virgin, but he may have been considered to have been a demigod.

because the bronze age shephards who believed that iwht all their heart, would "most definitely" not be the kind of gulliable people who would believe it if it wasn't true, right?

Right!

Actually Islam has better evidence than the Bible, but you're absolutely right that it doesn't have close to enough to counter the empirical evidnece that stands squarely against its claims.

Leaving behind the issue that all four of Jesus' officially sanctioned biographies were completed within 70 years of his life while Muhammad's first biography was written at least a century after his death, what empirical evidence is so devastating to the traditional religions? Please limit yourself to pieces of data that are more than a deeper understanding of data available to the first religious believers.

applying the same literary critical standards used on Christian documents to Muslim documents leads to the absurd conclusion that Muhammad's existence can be reasonably doubted)

Actually, that's not true. There is no empirical evidence countering the hearsay evidence which leads to the existence of the historical figures Jesus and Mohammed, therefore it's perfectly reaosnable to believe they existed. But they didn't have magic powers. That's for children to believe about their cartoons, not for adults to beleive about historical figures.

Why? What is irrational about the miraculous, exactly? That it's contrary to the "laws of nature"? The first believers in miracles had an inchoate knowledge of those, enough to know what was contrary to the natural course of things.

I honestly can't find a charitable reading of what you've said thus far that construes what you've said as an argument.

When your methodological criteria rule out any "historical religions" (religions basing themselves on events that took place in the real world), then it's hard to see how you would go about discovering their truth even if they were true.

We are not ruling out the historical events such as the crucifiction, Mohammed's militry career, etc, we are ruling out the magical claims. Why? Becuase the hearsay evidence for those magical claims, is insufficient to counter the much stronger empirical evidence AGAINST those claims.

What empirical evidence? That dead people don't rise from the dead? Everybody knows that. That's why things like the resurrection are given the weight they have in apologetics. The evidence that is most relevant to assessing this particular miracle is going to be that evidence that pertains to Jesus' body, specifically. And we have no evidence that Jesus, specifically, stayed dead. Ordinarily, that would mean nothing. But we have compelling reasons to think that his tomb was empty, that his disciples thought they saw him alive, and that they went on to found the most paradoxical religion in history in his name.

If you just want to stick with humanism and have no issues accepting the fact that, thirteen billion years from now, you may as well have never lived, then that's fine. But if you find yourself yearning for some kind of meaning beyond the grave (and I don't just mean an afterlife, though that may be a part of it), then you have to be able to look at all the religions competing for your attention. And if that means amending your methodology to allow the most significant modern religions (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism) to be "contenders," then so much the worse for your methodology.

What you're saying is your methods which are best for figuring out what is true rule out religion, but if ruling out religion makes you feel sad, then who cares about the truth, change your method to one that makes you believe what makes you feel good, not what is true.

I'm saying that it's irrational to treat alternative worldviews that would allow your life to have meaning as less preferable to a current worldview that robs your life of meaning. You can be a rational humanist only if you're a reluctant humanist.

I'm sorry, I care about truth. And so should you.

The truth is indeed important. But one shouldn't be so scared of having false beliefs that one refuses to touch religion with a ten foot pole.

It might feel great to believe that I won the lottery, for example. But if it's not true, and I stat acting as tough it were true jus tbecuase it feels good to do so, then I'll find myself broke very quickly.

But what if it doesn't feel great to never talk to your family, and then you decide that your belief in "family" was always just wishful thinking, so you proceed to cut yourself off from those who care for you the most?

Both of our views are more nuanced than cheap caricatures would indicate.

There are no bonus points for accepting whatever one is taught or indoctrinated to accept (except in the opinion of some promoters of "go to heaven" beliefs).

I'm not saying that there are no reasons to accept Christianity as true. I'm just saying that, when evaluating those reasons, it is simply irrational to require the same kind of evidence for them as one gets of, say, establishing the existence of the Higgs Boson.

Why? Why should I be less serious, pragmatic and diligent in trying to find out about God than in trying to find out about the God Particle.

The existence of God and the truth of the Christian religion are two entirely different subjects. I would contend that the existence of God can be proven with a substantial degree of certainty, if one is willing to make some plausible metaphysical commitments. But that's a topic for a thread (or three) I'll (hopefully) be starting later in the week.

As an example, say we discus the authorship of the gospels. I bring up Papias and argue that the gospel of Mark was basically a compilation of what one of the apostles (Peter) preached about the life of Jesus. You then bring up the fact that this doesn't prove that anyone associated with an apostle even touched a copy of the gospel of Mark. While you are correct, given that we have no data to the contrary, I don't see why we shouldn't trust the source.

We should trust the source, except for when that source makes hearsay-based claims that directly conflict with empirical evidence about the world.

After all, however long after the events Papias was, he was certainly in a better position for finding out the truth than we are now

No he wasn't. He did not have access to multiple streams of evidence from disparate sources, no method for assessing convergence of those streams, no database of historical facts to create a framework with which to place any new data in the proper prospective. He had no more direct access to the data than we do, and he had way lorse methods for analyzing the data than we do.

That's simply false. We have reason to believe that Papias was either himself a disciple of John the Apostle, or else was a disciple of one John the Elder who was in turn a disciple of one of the apostles. Given the extensive use of epistles in the ancient Christian community, it seems to me that Papias would have been in an excellent position to determine the authorship of the gospels.

And he had good reason to look into things, as gnostics and other heretics were infiltrating the church.

Preposterous. He had good reasons to fabricate and indoctrinate as much as he could, to best serve his socio-political purpose of expunging those gnostics and heretics from the church.

Just like the Federal government had to fabricate AIDS to get rid of those nasty blacks and gays?

If you want to be taken seriously, don't make up conspiracy theories. What if Papias did make something up? This was in the first half of the second century, someone would have remembered something from the Apostolic era and the gnostics would have pushed that something as far as it would go. The only way to get around this is to assume that the first two generations of the Christian church didn't actually care about what the apostles said, and every positive datum we have militates in the opposite direction.

As important as a healthy skepticism is, in a case like this, one needs to be willing to take a leap of faith.

Why in a case like this, but not in the case of every other religious claim in the world from Islam, to Hinduism to Greek Mythology?

Islam would take several threads, but I think that one can ultimately make the case that Christianity is more probable than Islam to be true. I think that the extinction of Greek mythology militates strongly against its truth. "Hinduism" is more of an atmosphere than it is a religion when it comes down to it. But to the extent that it is pantheistic, I think that it can be eliminated from serious consideration on the grounds of natural theology. Again, I'm going to be posting some in-depth natural theological threads sometime this week, and some of the issues of "religion-picking" can be dealt with there.

What do you mean by leap of faith?

To accept as true what you happen to regard as an extraordinary claim on the basis of what you happen to regard as ordinary evidence.

I have taken no such leaps in the history of my spiritual life.

Ther eis overwhelming evidence that, for example, Jesus wasn't actually born of a virgin. The leap of faith you speak of involves disregarding everyhting we know about medicine, biology, chemistry, physics, linguistics, history, anthropology, to believe in a fairy tale that has no more evidentiary backing than Poseidon or Aquaman.

Unless, of course, Jesus was resurrected. And for that, we must deal with particular data (relating to the historical events in question), not general data (questions of medicine, biology, chemistry, physics, etc.).

When we do so, it turns out that we have a "higher order" trilemma (or quatralemma) for the Christian apologist, even though Lewis' formulation has been discredited. Either the Apostles said what has been attributed to them, or they did not. If they did not, than Christianity is a legend. If they said what has been attributed to them, either they believed it, or they did not believe it. If they did not believe what they said, than Christianity is a lie. If they did believe what they said, they were either correct, or they were not. If they were incorrect, then given the nature of the doctrines involved, Christianity is a lunacy. If, however, their belief was correct, then Christianity is legitimate.

Earlier apologists have beaten the lunacy and lie hypotheses to death. The only viable alternatives left today are legitimacy and legend. So all I have to do to demonstrate the truth of Christianity is prove that the Apostles said what was attributed to them, and the remainder can be dealt with by previous apologists.

It's only a small one

It's not a small one. It's an earth shattering one. And even if it were small, there is no logical argument for accepting a small lie instead of the truth.

I am not referring to the claim that Jesus was resurrected. I am referring to the evidence we have that the Gospels were written in communities with access to eyewitness testimony, that Jesus' tomb was empty and his Apostles claimed to have seen him, etc.

You seem prone, not to doubting the conclusions the apologist draws, but the data from which he draws them, even if it is rather mundane data (eg that Matthew was written by an Apostle).

Now, if I expect you to believe in full-fledged Christianity, then I simply cannot start with the documents. I need to establish that God exists, that He is the kind of God who would be willing and able to intervene in history, and that the sort of miracles Christianity makes claims about are "fitting" ways of deviating from the metre of the overall cosmic harmony. That requires a book-length treatment of the question, for that purpose, I recommend you to C.S. Lewis' book "miracles," though I hope to present the disjointed pieces of such a case during my activity here.

Christianity wasn't designed for people who think like robots, after all. It was designed for people who think like people.

It was designed for people who do not think, and instead just believe what they are told.

That is not correct. If you think that a pagan would just cut himself off from his community by abandoning his native gods and proceed to join a community of strangers offering a religion with absurd tenets, you are simply mistaken. He would think about what he was doing, he would step back and ask himself "are these miracles the sort of bits of "artistic license" we would expect from the author of this universe?" or something of that sort. What he would not do is break out his handy-dandy pocket abacus and engage in some Bayesian probability calculus.

The gospel can make sense to the former kind of person. The latter kind, however, is a different story.

[FarWanderer]

The universe is like a work of art, an epic poem.

So you say...

In order for it to count as a poem at all, it has to have a certain sort of metre and rhythm to it. In other words, it has to have laws of nature. And it's obvious that these laws can't be broken willy-nilly - it destroys the unity of the work. However, at certain key moments, a great poet will purposefully alter the rhythm of his poem in order to enhance the dramatic effect.

Dramatic effect for whom? For us? For God? Who's his audience here?

At the climactic moment, this deviation from the normal course of the poem is more than merely permissible, but desirable. This doesn't make deviation from the normal course of the poem permissible in less important parts of the work. A good poet is one who deviates from his normal framework selectively. The same is true of a good Creator.

You said God intervened early to save the most people, and now you say he stopped intervening because it would ruin the story.

In other words, you are saying that God wants to save as many people as possible, except for when it might interfere with his artistic goals, in which case God finds it permissible that a few more souls end up unsaved.

Is that right?

[Danmark]

Actually, Siddhartha's mother was married at the time when she conceived him. Married people generally aren't virgins....

And neither are women 'great with child.' BTW, according to Matthew, Mary and Joseph were married before the birth of Jesus, tho' the marriage had not been consumated.
Matthew 1:18-19 [KJV]

Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. 19Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a publick example, was minded to put her away privily. Luke is ambiguous, only referring to them as engaged.

According to this source if they were engaged, Mary and Joseph were considered 'married.'
In Bible times, Jewish marriage customs regarding a couple’s engagement were far different and much more stringent than those we are familiar with today, especially in the West. Marriages were arranged by the parents of the bride and groom and often without even consulting the couple to be married. A contract was prepared in which the groom’s parents paid a bride price. Such a contract was immediately deemed binding, with the couple considered married even though the actual ceremony and consummation of the marriage would not occur for as long as a year afterwards. The time between was a sort of testing of fidelity with the couple having little, if any, contact with each other.
http://www.gotquestions.org/Joseph-and- ... z3GEElZdVr

[Wootah]

[Replying to atheist buddy]

Different historians date the bible books differently - according to their agendas.

[Thruit]

atheistbuddy said,
Eyewitness testimony: When a person writes down what he saw/heard/tasted/smelled/touched

Hearsay testimony: When a person writes down what another person told him


Here's an example of eyewitness testimony: "I heard the thunderstorm last night"

Here's an example of hearsay tesitmony: "My wife tells me there was a thunderstorm last night, although I slept through it and didn't hear anything"....

Tell me how you know Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independance?

[atheist buddy]

atheistbuddy said,
Eyewitness testimony: When a person writes down what he saw/heard/tasted/smelled/touched

Hearsay testimony: When a person writes down what another person told him


Here's an example of eyewitness testimony: "I heard the thunderstorm last night"

Here's an example of hearsay tesitmony: "My wife tells me there was a thunderstorm last night, although I slept through it and didn't hear anything"....

Tell me how you know Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independance?

Through direct empirical evidence, and indipendent corroboration by multiple streams of evidence.

I don't know with 100% certainty that an alien from the Andromeda Galaxy didn't take control of Jefferson's brain through a remote ray gun and caused him to write the document even though he didn't actually intend to himself. But there is zero evidence of that, and overwhelming evidence that Jefferson penned the declaration himself.

It therefore stands to reason to operate under the assumption that he did so, until evidence to the contrary is presented.

[Thruit]

atheistbuddy said,
Eyewitness testimony: When a person writes down what he saw/heard/tasted/smelled/touched

Hearsay testimony: When a person writes down what another person told him


Here's an example of eyewitness testimony: "I heard the thunderstorm last night"

Here's an example of hearsay tesitmony: "My wife tells me there was a thunderstorm last night, although I slept through it and didn't hear anything"....

Tell me how you know Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independance?

Through direct empirical evidence, and indipendent corroboration by multiple streams of evidence.

I don't know with 100% certainty that an alien from the Andromeda Galaxy didn't take control of Jefferson's brain through a remote ray gun and caused him to write the document even though he didn't actually intend to himself. But there is zero evidence of that, and overwhelming evidence that Jefferson penned the declaration himself.

It therefore stands to reason to operate under the assumption that he did so, until evidence to the contrary is presented.

Sorry my friend, but everything you've offered is hearsay.

[atheist buddy]

atheistbuddy said,
Eyewitness testimony: When a person writes down what he saw/heard/tasted/smelled/touched

Hearsay testimony: When a person writes down what another person told him


Here's an example of eyewitness testimony: "I heard the thunderstorm last night"

Here's an example of hearsay tesitmony: "My wife tells me there was a thunderstorm last night, although I slept through it and didn't hear anything"....

Tell me how you know Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independance?

Through direct empirical evidence, and indipendent corroboration by multiple streams of evidence.

I don't know with 100% certainty that an alien from the Andromeda Galaxy didn't take control of Jefferson's brain through a remote ray gun and caused him to write the document even though he didn't actually intend to himself. But there is zero evidence of that, and overwhelming evidence that Jefferson penned the declaration himself.

It therefore stands to reason to operate under the assumption that he did so, until evidence to the contrary is presented.

Sorry my friend, but everything you've offered is hearsay.

It actually truly isn't.

We have the original document. You can go view it yourself. You can analyze the calligraphy yourself. You can compare the calligraphy with that in other writings by Jefferson. It's direct physical evidence.

If I wrote "My friend Dave did an analysis of the calligraphy and it seems to indicate that the letter was written by Jefferson", then my writing of it, would constitute hearsay evidence. I would be writing down what somebody else told me they experienced directly.

If I wrote "I personally did an analysis of the caligraphy and it seems to indicate that the letter was written by Jefferson", then that would be eyewitness evidence, because I am documenting my direct experience of Jefferson's calligraphy.

But if YOU and ANYBODY ELSE IN THE WORLD can see and study the calligraphy itself, then it's not hearsay, it's not eyewitness, it's DIRECT PHYSICAL evidence, the strongest form of evidence there is.

Are we clear now, and is there any chance at all that you might get confused again at any time in the future?

[Thruit]

atheistbuddy said,
Eyewitness testimony: When a person writes down what he saw/heard/tasted/smelled/touched

Hearsay testimony: When a person writes down what another person told him


Here's an example of eyewitness testimony: "I heard the thunderstorm last night"

Here's an example of hearsay tesitmony: "My wife tells me there was a thunderstorm last night, although I slept through it and didn't hear anything"....

Tell me how you know Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independance?

Through direct empirical evidence, and indipendent corroboration by multiple streams of evidence.

I don't know with 100% certainty that an alien from the Andromeda Galaxy didn't take control of Jefferson's brain through a remote ray gun and caused him to write the document even though he didn't actually intend to himself. But there is zero evidence of that, and overwhelming evidence that Jefferson penned the declaration himself.

It therefore stands to reason to operate under the assumption that he did so, until evidence to the contrary is presented.

Sorry my friend, but everything you've offered is hearsay.

It actually truly isn't.

We have the original document. You can go view it yourself. You can analyze the calligraphy yourself. You can compare the calligraphy with that in other writings by Jefferson. It's direct physical evidence.

If I wrote "My friend Dave did an analysis of the calligraphy and it seems to indicate that the letter was written by Jefferson", then my writing of it, would constitute hearsay evidence. I would be writing down what somebody else told me they experienced directly.

If I wrote "I personally did an analysis of the caligraphy and it seems to indicate that the letter was written by Jefferson", then that would be eyewitness evidence, because I am documenting my direct experience of Jefferson's calligraphy.

But if YOU and ANYBODY ELSE IN THE WORLD can see and study the calligraphy itself, then it's not hearsay, it's not eyewitness, it's DIRECT PHYSICAL evidence, the strongest form of evidence there is.

Are we clear now, and is there any chance at all that you might get confused again at any time in the future?

You believe any writing said to be by Jefferson was written by him because you were told that by those who never knew Jefferson:

Atheistbuddy said Tom wrote it!

Hearsay and nothing more.

[Danmark]

You believe any writing said to be by Jefferson was written by him because you were told that by those who never knew Jefferson:

Atheistbuddy said Tom wrote it!

Hearsay and nothing more.

Again, it is not helpful to simply call something 'hearsay' and dispense with it as unreliable evidence.
See http://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/fre/rule_803
for the many exceptions to the hearsay rule. These exceptions all indicate that evidence, under certain conditions, is admissible despite the fact it is 'hearsay.' Experience has shown that some forms of hearsay are reliable and are admissible.

One of 23 at the site listed above:
"Records of a Regularly Conducted Activity. A record of an act, event, condition, opinion, or diagnosis if:

(A) the record was made at or near the time by — or from information transmitted by — someone with knowledge;

(B) the record was kept in the course of a regularly conducted activity of a business, organization, occupation, or calling, whether or not for profit;

(C) making the record was a regular practice of that activity;

(D) all these conditions are shown by the testimony of the custodian or another qualified witness, or by a certification that complies with Rule 902(11) or (12) or with a statute permitting certification; and

(E) neither the opponent does not show that the source of information nor or the method or circumstances of preparation indicate a lack of trustworthiness."