The Problem with NonTheists and Facts

[WinePusher]

Fact: The universe began to exist out of nothing

---The conclusion of this lecture is that the universe has not existed forever. Rather, the universe, and time itself, had a beginning in the Big Bang, about 15 billion years ago. Source
---As a result of the Big Bang (the tremendous explosion which marked the beginning of our Universe), the universe is expanding and most of the galaxies within it are moving away from each other. Source
---The universe had a beginning. There was once nothing and now there is something. Source

Fact: The universe is fine tuned for life

---The laws of nature form a system that is extremely fine-tuned, and very little in physical law can be altered without destroying the possibility of the development of life as we know it. Were it not for a series of startling coincidences in the precise details of physical law, it seems, humans and similar life-forms would never have come into being. Source
---It is this extraordinary instance of apparent “fine tuning�, and others, which has brought the world’s most respected cosmologists, including Leonard Susskind, Alan Guth, Alexander Vilenkin, Brian Greene, Max Tegmark, & Andrei Linde, to recognize not only the legitimacy of the phenomenon, but the necessity to explain it. Source

Fact: Jesus was a historical figure and the New Testament relays semi-reliable information about him

---With respect to Jesus, we have numerous, independent accounts of his life in the sources lying behind the Gospels (and the writings of Paul) -- sources that originated in Jesus' native tongue Aramaic and that can be dated to within just a year or two of his life (before the religion moved to convert pagans in droves). Historical sources like that are is pretty astounding for an ancient figure of any kind. Moreover, we have relatively extensive writings from one first-century author, Paul, who acquired his information within a couple of years of Jesus' life and who actually knew, first hand, Jesus' closest disciple Peter and his own brother James. If Jesus did not exist, you would think his brother would know it......Whether we like it or not, Jesus certainly existed. Source

Fact: The tomb Jesus was buried in after his crucifixion and death was found empty

---The stolen body hypothesis posits that the body of Jesus Christ was stolen from his burial place. His tomb was found empty not because he was resurrected, but because the body had been hidden somewhere else by the apostles or unknown persons. Source
---An examination of both Pauline and gospel material leads to eight lines of evidence in support of the conclusion that Jesus's tomb was discovered empty: (1) Paul's testimony implies the historicity of the empty tomb, (2) the presence of the empty tomb pericope in the pre-Markan passion story supports its historicity, (3) the use of 'on the first day of the week' instead of 'on the third day' points to the primitiveness of the tradition, (4) the narrative is theologically unadorned and non-apologetic, (5) the discovery of the tomb by women is highly probable, (6) the investigation of the empty tomb by the disciples is historically probable, (7) it would have been impossible for the disciples to proclaim the resurrection in Jerusalem had the tomb not been empty, (8) the Jewish polemic presupposes the empty tomb. Source

And in light of all this I suspect there will still be nonbelievers posting in this thread who will continue to deny these 4, well established facts. For the sake of intellectual honesty (a virtue that is desperately needed on this forum) theists need to admit that these facts do not decisively prove God's existence. They only lend support to the proposition of God and the God hypothesis is only one of many explanations that accounts for these facts. In turn, atheists need to stop mimicking young earth creationists by denying these scientific and historical facts. There are many atheists and nontheists on this forum who do accept these facts without any reservations, but the ones that don't really need to start getting with program.

Question: Are the four items listed above facts? If so, how much credibility do they give the God hypothesis and Christian theism?

[Tired of the Nonsense]

[Replying to post 130 by The Me's]

Actually, all four of them likely relied on accounts that were written while Jesus was still alive.

Please provide evidence for any accounts written while Jesus was still alive.

[Danmark]

[Replying to post 123 by The Me's]

Since we have eye-witness accounts of the resurrection, I think you're grasping at straws, not "we".

What "eye witness accounts" are you referring to?

Matthew, Mark and John were eye-witnesses.
Luke interviewed eye-witnesses.

(Actually, all four of them likely relied on accounts that were written while Jesus was still alive. There is literally no disagreement whatsoever between the four different sources. It's not just impossible, it's really boneheaded to think that they were written from memory decades after the fact. I'm surprised any time I see scholars try to pass this off as a legitimate argument.)

Where did you come up with this fantasy? No scholar, no matter how conservative, claims a date as early as 30 CE. The earliest date I have ever heard claimed is 20 years later, 50 CE.

Estimates for the dates when the canonical gospel accounts were written vary significantly; and the evidence for any of the dates is scanty. Because the earliest surviving complete copies of the gospels date to the 4th century and because only fragments and quotations exist before that, scholars use higher criticism to propose likely ranges of dates for the original gospel autographs. Scholars variously assess the majority (though not the consensus [34]) view as follows:

Mark: c. 68–73,[35] c. 65–70.[36]

Matthew: c. 70–100,[35] c. 80–85.[36]

Luke: c. 80–100, with most arguing for somewhere around 85,[35] c. 80–85.[36]

John: c. 90–100,[36] c. 90–110,[37] The majority view is that it was written in stages, so there was no one date of composition.

Traditional Christian scholarship has generally preferred to assign earlier dates. Some historians interpret the end of the book of Acts as indicative, or at least suggestive, of its date; as Acts mentions neither the death of Paul, generally accepted as the author of many of the Epistles and who, according to the ecclesiastical tradition transmitted by Eusebius, was put to death by the Romans shortly before AD 68,[38] nor any other event post AD 62, notably the Neronian persecution of AD 64–65 that had such impact on the early church.[39]

Acts is attributed to the author of the Gospel of Luke, which is believed to have been written before Acts, and therefore would shift the chronology of authorship back, putting Mark as early as the mid 50s. Here are the dates given in the modern NIV Study Bible:

Matthew: c. 50 to 70s

Mark: c. 50s to early 60s, or late 60s

Luke: c. 59 to 63, or 70s to 80s

John: c. 85 to near 100, or 50s to 70
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel

Please cite your authority for claiming even one of the gospels was written while Jesus was still alive. Among other problems you'll have is the fact that all scholars agree Paul wrote the earliest documents that are included in the canon of the NT, nothing earlier than 51 CE. More importantly nothing in any of Paul's letters indicate he had any familiarity with any of the gospels.

[WinePusher]

Never have I flipped, nor have I flopped.

If you read my topic, I stated clearly that the empty tomb was an historical fact. I also explained further that while the empty tomb is factual, the explanations for the tomb (including the resurrection) are by no means factual and tend to be based on educated speculation. So what was the point of arguing with my topic if you actually agreed with it? Why didn't you just come out and admit that we're in agreement about the empty tomb? Why'd it'd take you six pages to admit to it being a fact?

I have been laying down this exact same message for years.

Like I said, I don't have any interest in reading the posts you've written over the years. I have better things to do with my time.

Many of your facts ARE unsustainable. Your insistence that the apostles all uniformly died horrible martyrs death in defence of their faith, for example. This is based on propaganda produced by the Catholic church for centuries, but it is NOT based on verifiable facts. It's Christian mythology.

You do realize that Christians were actively persecuted by three major Roman emperors right? Also, the martydom of primary disciples such as Peter is documented by Eusebius, so for you to claim that there's no evidence for this is completely absurd. Yes, I don't doubt that you'll make up some lame excuse for why Eusebius historical record is unacceptable. But the lengths to which you have to go to try to discredit Christianity is truly stunning. You're actually willing to disavow all of the Christian martydoms and persecution that took place under the Roman Empire, which is a historical fact that even high school ancient history textbooks teach. It just goes to show that dogmatic/fundamentalist atheism is no better than dogmatic/fundamentalist Christianity.

I'm sure we butted heads once or twice but I don't really remember debating that much.

You probably do not remember because you abruptly disappeared from the discussion every time.

So what? I debated with a number of people who have abruptly left the discussion. Do you see me getting mad about it? No, because I recognize the fact that people have lives.

I never said you don't have the right to engage in political debate about social issues. It's one thing to argue about religious institutions and the American religious right, but it's another thing entirely to be arguing and obsessing about an entity that you don't believe exists. I think it's perfectly fine for atheists to argue and spend time fighting Christians who want to prevent gays from getting married, or who want to impose creation science in public schools. Those are legitimate issues to be concerned about. But, it's weird, creepy and somewhat sad to have tons of atheists arguing and obsessing about something they don't believe in. Like I said, I don't waste my life arguing and obsessing about unicorns, fairys or bigfoot.

You might waste your time on unicorns, fairies and bigfoot if they had organized into political groups and were actively seeking to impose some sort of ancient supernatural make believe based view of reality on the rest of modern society.

Yea, but I would only argue with the policies they're trying to implement. I honestly couldn't care less about their internal teachings and theology, along with their holy texts and rituals, etc.

It doesn't seem like you're aware of any of the philosophical scholarship that's gone into studying the problem of evil (theodicy). Evil does exist in the real world and philsophers have categorized evil into two sets: moral evil (evil committed by humans) and natural evil (evil committed by nature).

Natural evil is when you get eaten by a bear, as opposed to good, when you get to eat the bear. I'm certain that the bear has an entirely different point of view on this foolish system of thought. But bears are not foolish philosophers.

No. An example of natural evil would be something like Hurricane Katrina or the earthquake in Haiti. The earthquake and the hurricane are not themselves evil, they are merely just byproducts of nature. But the effects and devestation caused by these natural disasters, such as premature deaths, ruined lives, etc, are by definition evil.

In either case the question of good and evil is entirely a concept determined by the point of view of who it is that is getting to do the eating. And in either case it is simply an event to the universe at large, neither good nor bad.

Not really. Animals, such as bears, do not possess the same level of consciousness and emotional awareness as humans do. Additionally, you seem to be suggesting that rounding up a herd of cows in a slaughterhouse is the equivalent to rounding up Jews into death camps. Do you realize how absurd this comparison is?

And you think evil occurs because some individuals believe that it is their right to impose their will onto others? Is this really your definition of evil? I hope you're joking since voting would qualify as an evil act under your absurd definition.

Notice that I said "physically impose their will on others." Words actually do have meaning you see, and changing the words, or leaving them out to suit your purposes, is rather less then pointless when the original statement is right there for all to see. Makes you appear to be disingenuous. Something I am NOT generally accusing you of, by the way.

Oh, well since no Christian is trying to physically impose their beliefs onto other people in America what are you complaining about? Christians are trying to advance their agenda through the legislative process, as all other groups are. So if you're only upset with the physical and forceful imposition of beliefs onto other people why are you complaining about American Christians, whom you admit are trying to acheive their goals politically? Didn't you write this:

Tired of the Nonsense wrote:
If atheists appear to be "hostile" to religion, that is because religion seeks to impose it's outdated ancient superstitious will on the rest of us. By force, in the case of radical Islamists. And politically, in the case of American Christianity.


You admit that American Christians are not trying to impose their beliefs through the use of force. You also claim that you only have a problem when people try to use force to get their way. Well, American Christians aren't using force so what is the problem?

Here's how elaborate my "theory" is: A group of associates gain possession of the body of their friend. After using a crypt that belongs to one of them to wash and prepare the corpse, because the crypt happened to be convenient, they quietly took the body of their friend home to be buried. Then later when they return, and using the now empty crypt as a source of mystery, they begin to spread the rumor that their friend had come back to life.

Yes, this is pretty much what a conspiracy theory is. First you assume that the tomb wasn't inspected by anybody. Second, you assume that the disciples were motivated to start a new religion and attract converts. Third, you assume that every single Gospel account of the post mortem Christ is fabricated (because nothing you say here contradicts what is said in the Gospels). Fourth, you casually ignore the fact that the the disciples died cruel deaths for their belief in Jesus' divinity by disregarding ancient history. You deny the prevalence of Christian martydom and persecution during the first and second centur and you deny all historical accounts documenting the disciples martydom.

I doubt your theory would gain any traction if it were presented at a Society of Biblical Literature conference.

Surprisingly, and seemingly against all odds, the rumor eventually begins to attract converts. Try reading up on the origins of the Mormon religion sometime. It sounds like a poorly conceived work of fiction, but it actually occurred. Could people really be THAT gullible? Now look at Jonestown, and the only obvious answer is yes. I don't understand it either. But then I have always had the ability to think for myself and I do not have the capacity to understand such abject gullibility.

I know nothing about Mormonism so I can't really comment on that. It is not an academic interest of mine. But I can say that there were tons of messiah figures and religious leaders during the early first century, and as you admit Christianity begins to grow and spread against all odds even if your theory is correct. Why? You'd think that a belief system that was based on a total lie would crumble quickly. Instead it grows and spread throughout the Roman Empire and eventually ends up becoming the official religion of Rome. And after two thousand years it still remains the most dominant religion on the face of the earth. Your theory utterly fails to explain this.

Never said otherwise. But you did dodge the point though. The Gospels are the primary sources of information that historians use to derive information about Jesus. Even the Jesus Seminar, which represents the far left of the biblical scholarship community, realizes that there are many pieces of information within the Gospels that are accurate and likely to have happened. My claim in the topic was that the Gospels are semi-reliable, and biblical scholarship agrees with this position. Correct me if I'm wrong, but your position seems to be that there is nothing in the New Testament that can be correlate with the established historical record. In other words there's no truth to be found in the New Testament. Sorry, but this view has no intellectual support for it.

You keep using the word "historians," but you are really talking about religious scholars.

No, I'm talking specifically about New Testament scholars. Bart Ehrman along with the late Raymond E. Brown were accomplished historians of the ancient world. I also cited the Jesus seminar, which is not comprised of conservative Christian religious scholars, and how they completely refute your claims about the New Testament.

Way to dodge the point again. You, for some reason, decided to add the fact that the Gospels were written decades after the events. Many other atheists do the same so I assume it must be a cherished talking point among you guys. Well, the fact that the Gospels were only written decades after the event lends them greater credibility. In other cases (such as the biographies of Alexander the Great) the texts themselves were written centuries after the event, and since decades are shorter than centuries, the Gospels would actually be considered more reliable than those other texts. So do you realize that the Gospels being written only decades after the fact is a positive piece of information that helps establish their credibility?

How do Christian claims that a corpse came back to life and flew away, or that hordes of dead people came up out of their graves and wandered the streets in any way begin to compare to any other generally recognized historical event?

It's really simple. All these events, which are miracles by definition, were claimed to have happened in the past. History is the academic discipline that studies past events, and therefore if we are to determine whether these miracles actually did happen we must critically analyze them using the various textual criticism techniques and other historical criterions.

What can you name that would serve as an example of a direct historical comparison?

I would say any other event that was claimed to have occured at around the same time. Jesus' existence can be compared with the existence of any other historical figure. Additionally, the New Testament can be compared with an other text originating in the first and second century.

There is a clear difference between stories of actual events, and stories of pure myth and make believe. For example Hesiod, Homer, Euripides, Theocritus and Virgil all wrote of a race of one-eyed giants known as the cyclops. The cyclops were not only believed in ancient times to be historical, they were thought to be fully extent... the inhabitants of a far off island and unable to sail to the "civilized" world because of their size.

This is where you and I disagree. You assert that the Gospels are not and were not intended to be historical texts while I assert the exact opposite. I am very familiar with Vergil's work, and Vergil was not a historian. He was a poet, which is why his seminal epic poem, the Aeneid, was written in a poetic meter (dactylic hexameter). The poetic meter can be immediately noticed by anyone who is fluent in latin, therefore we can reasonably conclude that the Aeneid was not meant to be read as a historical text. However, the same is not true for the Gospels. In fact, the beginning of the Gospel of Luke explicitly states that the text is an historical account written after careful investigations of the events.

Will this do?

Matt. 27:
[64] Command therefore that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day, lest his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead: so the last error shall be worse than the first.

Sounded like a conspiracy to the priests as well.

What does this have to do with anything?

It has EVERYTHING to do with your challenge. YOU asked for evidence of a conspiracy. And it's right there in Matthew, and even that you summarily reject. Because it does not correspond to your ideology. The priests believed that a conspiracy existed among the disciples to spread the false rumor that Jesus had risen from the dead. And there is the evidence you requested, right there in scripture.

Ok, I see what you're saying. You think that the priests mentioned here say what your saying. All this verse indicates is that the Jews were paranoid about the disciples stealing the body. It does not in anyway show that the disciples kept the body and used the tomb as a charade.

Now, allow me to restate what I said in my previous post to you.

"The practice of Christianity was not a violation of Roman law at all during the time frame we are discussing here, circa 30's and 40's AD. That would be the time frame that Acts is concerned with. There is no indication, historically or in scripture, of Christians being persecuted by the Romans during this time frame. Persecution of all things Jewish began after the great fire in Rome which occurred in 64 AD, and became much more virulent after the Romans reconquered Jerusalem and expelled the Jews from the holy land in 70 AD. Christianity was still basically a Jewish splinter cult at this point. And certainly during the second and third centuries, Christian persecution was widespread. It depends on exactly who you would consider to be a Christian today of course."

This doesn't address the point. I do not disagree with you that persecution against Christians did not exist during circa 30 and 40 AD. My point is that the disciples were persecuted and executed for their belief in the risen Christ. The only way you would be right is if the disciples actually died before the mass persecutions and executions began, but all evidence shows that the disciples were alive during the persecutions and were actually executed themselves.

That really doesn't matter. All that matters is that the disciples in question died cruel deaths for their beliefs.

Please provide evidence for this repeated claim on your part.

DC&R Forum Rules:
5. Support your assertions/arguments with evidence. Do not persist in making a claim without supporting it. All unsupported claims can be challenged for supporting evidence. Opinions require no support, but they should not be considered as valid to any argument, nor will they be considered as legitimate support for any claim.

It is, therefore, recorded that Paul was beheaded in Rome itself, and that Peter likewise was crucified under Nero. -Eusebius
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf201 ... .xxvi.html

Through envy and jealousy, the greatest and most righteous pillars [of the Church] have been persecuted and put to death.26 Let us set before our eyes the illustrious27 apostles. Peter, through unrighteous envy, endured not one or two, but numerous labours and when he had at length suffered martyrdom, departed to the place of glory due to him. -Clement
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.ii.ii.v.html

Would you like anything else?

[Ooberman]

[Replying to post 123 by The Me's]

Since we have eye-witness accounts of the resurrection, I think you're grasping at straws, not "we".

What "eye witness accounts" are you referring to?

Matthew, Mark and John were eye-witnesses.
Luke interviewed eye-witnesses.

(Actually, all four of them likely relied on accounts that were written while Jesus was still alive. There is literally no disagreement whatsoever between the four different sources. It's not just impossible, it's really boneheaded to think that they were written from memory decades after the fact. I'm surprised any time I see scholars try to pass this off as a legitimate argument.)

Where did you come up with this fantasy? No scholar, no matter how conservative, claims a date as early as 30 CE. The earliest date I have ever heard claimed is 20 years later, 50 CE.

Estimates for the dates when the canonical gospel accounts were written vary significantly; and the evidence for any of the dates is scanty. Because the earliest surviving complete copies of the gospels date to the 4th century and because only fragments and quotations exist before that, scholars use higher criticism to propose likely ranges of dates for the original gospel autographs. Scholars variously assess the majority (though not the consensus [34]) view as follows:

Mark: c. 68–73,[35] c. 65–70.[36]

Matthew: c. 70–100,[35] c. 80–85.[36]

Luke: c. 80–100, with most arguing for somewhere around 85,[35] c. 80–85.[36]

John: c. 90–100,[36] c. 90–110,[37] The majority view is that it was written in stages, so there was no one date of composition.

Traditional Christian scholarship has generally preferred to assign earlier dates. Some historians interpret the end of the book of Acts as indicative, or at least suggestive, of its date; as Acts mentions neither the death of Paul, generally accepted as the author of many of the Epistles and who, according to the ecclesiastical tradition transmitted by Eusebius, was put to death by the Romans shortly before AD 68,[38] nor any other event post AD 62, notably the Neronian persecution of AD 64–65 that had such impact on the early church.[39]

Acts is attributed to the author of the Gospel of Luke, which is believed to have been written before Acts, and therefore would shift the chronology of authorship back, putting Mark as early as the mid 50s. Here are the dates given in the modern NIV Study Bible:

Matthew: c. 50 to 70s

Mark: c. 50s to early 60s, or late 60s

Luke: c. 59 to 63, or 70s to 80s

John: c. 85 to near 100, or 50s to 70
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel

Please cite your authority for claiming even one of the gospels was written while Jesus was still alive. Among other problems you'll have is the fact that all scholars agree Paul wrote the earliest documents that are included in the canon of the NT, nothing earlier than 51 CE. More importantly nothing in any of Paul's letters indicate he had any familiarity with any of the gospels.

This is when we can expect them to dismiss the majority of scholars and angle towards "Church Approved" scholars. They will assert that according to rules invented by those scholars, these are eyewitness accounts.

Meanwhile, the majority of scholars know these are anonymous books written for the purpose of convincing people of the Christian religion.

[otseng]

Stop the lies, Christians. Stop it. What a pathetic religion if it has to rely on such obvious lies.

It's the lowest and scummiest thing I've seen, because it only takes a few seconds to disprove the claim, but Christians don't care.

They simply don't care if they lie for their religion.

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[otseng]

Uh why should anyone believe you? You've clearly demonstrated that you know nothing about this topic so why are you still here? At least Tired of the Nonsense has shown he understands what he's talking, and despite his flip flopping he has a good grasp of New Testament studies and isn't totally ignorant of the topic at hand.

Besides why should anyone care about your uninformed opinions?

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[Star]

No, I'm talking specifically about New Testament scholars. Bart Ehrman along with the late Raymond E. Brown were accomplished historians of the ancient world. I also cited the Jesus seminar, which is not comprised of conservative Christian religious scholars, and how they completely refute your claims about the New Testament.

Bart Ehrman has a three-year diploma from Moody Bible Institute. He earned a BA from Wheaton College, a private Christian liberal arts school. He also has his Masters in Divinity and a PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary.

Raymond E. Brown was a reverend and priest, who also only studied theology at religious schools.

They're not historians. True modern-day historians are secular.

[Star]

You have claimed that Christians who 'challenge the Bible' are 'devoid of understanding of the rules of evidence.' This is a clumsy phrase, but it is your own.

No, it's clumsy because you misquoted me.

I claim that "in my experience, most PEOPLE who challenge the Bible are devoid of knowledge of the rules of evidence".

Sometimes the truth is uncomfortable, but here it is:

The Bible contains four sources for eye-witness accounts of Jesus' life.
Eye-witness accounts qualify as primary sources of historical evidence (Luke is secondary).

According to the rules of evidence, you're going to need a primary source to demonstrate that they gospels are something other than what they claim.

You can't just say they are and hope we take you seriously.

It's actually you who doesn't seem to understand the so-called "rules of evidence" you keep mentioning.

I'm familiar with the concepts of "primary" and "secondary" evidence, however, there's more to it than just this. They're just basic categories. Such categorizing doesn't speak at all to their accuracy.

Logically, we actually start at the default position of disbelief, or in statistics, the null hypothesis. You bear the burden of evidence or proof because you are making the positive claim. It's fallacious to shift the burden to skeptics to disprove it. You have nothing but stories of eyewitnesses which have possibly been forged.

You don't have direct eyewitness accounts, and even if you did, it still wouldn't be sufficient. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, not just "primary" evidence.

[dianaiad]

They're not historians. True modern-day historians are secular.

A 'true historian' fallacy, is it? Now exactly what is it about being an historian that requires that theists need not apply?

[dianaiad]

You don't have direct eyewitness accounts, and even if you did, it still wouldn't be sufficient. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, not just "primary" evidence.

....and of course, the level of extraordinariness required in such evidence is determined by those who have already made up their minds that there is no such evidence possible?

What is that old saw about how, for those who believe, no evidence is required, but for those who do not believe, no evidence is sufficient?' David Hume summed your position up fairly well, when he out and out stated that any evidence which would prove a miracle to him would have to be more miraculous than the event itself: in other words, there ain't no such thing, and there is no amount of evidence that could ever be shown him that would convince him that miracles (or God, for that matter) existed.

I mean, that's fine and all; it's actually a cogent argument...but it makes all those who claim that they would believe 'if only' enough proof existed probable liars. if only to themselves. They wouldn't believe, because they would not accept any proof as being sufficient. I wish that those who keep saying this would think about it, and find the level of evidence that they would indeed accept--and let everybody know, or else stop claiming that they would believe if they got enough of it.

Most of 'em, though, simply say to whatever is advanced, 'that's not good enough," or "that's not evidence," and that will be their response to anything presented to them.

Of course, they are not alone in this mindset. I am still shaking my head over the televangelist who said that if Jesus Christ Himself came down and told him that any part of the bible wasn't true, that he (the televangelist) would turn his back on Christ and hold to the bible.

To me? Same attitude, different end of the spectrum, is all.

As you stated; extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and, evidently, the extraordinary proof is less likely to be found than the events being claimed as miraculous.

Indeed, it's as 'faith based,' or rather, 'belief based,' a position as any fundamentalist theistic one.