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?

[Danmark]

Hearsay testimony is less reliable than eyewitness testimony

This is not true. I have pointed out why. 'Hearsay' can be as reliable or more reliable than "eyewitness" testimony." That is why there are exceptions to the hearsay rule. Even tho' some testimony may be hearsay, it is still admitted into evidence because experience has shown that in some cases it is at least as reliable as 'eyewitness' testimony which can be notoriously unreliable. Where you go wrong is when you assume that a certain class of testimony is automatically 'unreliable.' That is not the case. It's up to the trier of fact to determine the weight that should be given evidence admitted for consideration.

[David the apologist]

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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).

So when it comes to personally insignificant historical events, you're apathetic, and when it comes to potentially significant historical events, your skepticism dial is set to maximum?

That seems like a rational position for one who is interested in truth and accuracy of statements they regard as important. With things that make little or no difference, why bother checking veracity. With things that are important it is wise to be careful to distinguish as well as possible between truth and non-truth, accuracy and inaccuracy, fact and fiction.

But it's also important to give the truth a fair hearing. The same rules you appeal to in order to rule out Christianity rule out Islam and Hinduism as well, both of which suffer far worse issues in terms of closeness to eyewitnesses than Christianity does (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). 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.

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.

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.

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. 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. And he had good reason to look into things, as gnostics and other heretics were infiltrating the church. As important as a healthy skepticism is, in a case like this, one needs to be willing to take a leap of faith. It's only a small one, and it's rational to boot, even if it doesn't fit the usual empiricist criteria for rationality.

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

[Danmark]

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 ....

Doesn't make a lot of sense to me. 2000 years ago there were only about 50 million people on the planet. Today there are over 7 billion.

If numbers are your game, it makes more sense to intervene now when we have 5 million times more people on Earth than we did then. Besides, for very good reasons today we tend to put all those old stories about mighty men and fantastic deeds into the same dust bin. TODAY is when a real supernatural event would have great effect. Trouble is, it never happened way back when, and it isn't going to happen today. This has nothing to do with 'God' planning things and everything to do with the fact we have a more sophisticated audience today . . . well, except in some circles.

[Wootah]

[Replying to DanieltheDragon]

Well the claim from the Bible is that there are eye witness documents in it. It appears objectively untrue to say otherwise.

Naturally we have our agendas and weigh the evidence accordingly.

[FarWanderer]

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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).

It's not like God has to choose either now or antiquity. He's God. He can do both. But he doesn't. Why?

[Zzyzx]

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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.

Of course. That makes sense IF "God" has limited ability that must be conserved by contacting people during certain periods and not others.

A God with unlimited ability would not need to ration its contact.

[atheist buddy]

Hearsay testimony is less reliable than eyewitness testimony

This is not true. I have pointed out why. 'Hearsay' can be as reliable or more reliable than "eyewitness" testimony." That is why there are exceptions to the hearsay rule. Even tho' some testimony may be hearsay, it is still admitted into evidence because experience has shown that in some cases it is at least as reliable as 'eyewitness' testimony which can be notoriously unreliable. Where you go wrong is when you assume that a certain class of testimony is automatically 'unreliable.' That is not the case. It's up to the trier of fact to determine the weight that should be given evidence admitted for consideration.

Danmark, I hear you. And as a professional, you can debate circles around my layman butt, I get that. But as a general principle, with due allowance for exceptions and special cases, and always subject to the best judgment of the person analyzing the evidence, wouldn't you say that the general rule of thumb "Empirical evidence is more reliable than eyewitness testimony, which is more reliable than hearsay testimony", is closer to the truth than "hearsay tesitmony is more reliable than eyewitness testimony, which is more reliable than empirical evidence"?

[atheist buddy]

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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, as was Isis, Hercules and Alexander the Great, 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?

Why do you say this stuff, David?

So when it comes to personally insignificant historical events, you're apathetic, and when it comes to potentially significant historical events, your skepticism dial is set to maximum?

That seems like a rational position for one who is interested in truth and accuracy of statements they regard as important. With things that make little or no difference, why bother checking veracity. With things that are important it is wise to be careful to distinguish as well as possible between truth and non-truth, accuracy and inaccuracy, fact and fiction.

But it's also important to give the truth a fair hearing. The same rules you appeal to in order to rule out Christianity rule out Islam and Hinduism as well, both of which suffer far worse issues in terms of closeness to eyewitnesses than Christianity does

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. You are absolutely right that there is no more reason to believe islam or Hinduism are true than Christianity is.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

What do you mean by leap of faith? 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.

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.

and it's rational to boot

What? It's rational to do something irrational? It's rational to believe in zombie invasions, or flying horses or talking donkeys? Are you joking?

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.

[Danmark]

Danmark, I hear you. And as a professional, you can debate circles around my layman butt, I get that. But as a general principle, with due allowance for exceptions and special cases, and always subject to the best judgment of the person analyzing the evidence, wouldn't you say that the general rule of thumb "Empirical evidence is more reliable than eyewitness testimony, which is more reliable than hearsay testimony", is closer to the truth than "hearsay tesitmony is more reliable than eyewitness testimony, which is more reliable than empirical evidence"?

[emphasis applied] Thank you, and I acknowledge some of what I've written can be considered more pedantic than helpful. In a courtroom setting, virtually all evidence is 'empirical' because it is based on observation by the senses. If it were not, it would not be admitted into evidence at all, at least to prove some objective fact.*

The reason there is a general rule against hearsay 'to prove the truth of the matter' is because we can't cross examine the original speaker or writer. What you may be getting at is that in the case of the Bible we probably have hearsay upon hearsay and do not even know who the author is, the person who is repeating what someone told someone who claimed he observed an event. In that case, such 'evidence' would not even be admitted into evidence. That is why the dates of the various scriptures are so important, along with any bias each person along the chain of hearsay may have had. This is probably why Paul makes such a big deal about what a great Jew he was and how much he hated Christians, he's trying to establish his credibility. When Paul writes about what he actually saw or heard, it isn't hearsay, unless he is reporting what others said. Paul has other problems of course. Mainly he is just giving his opinion and claiming God or Jesus told him so. That is certainly unreliable hearsay or mere non expert opinion. Also, he claims to have seen and heard things others present did not see or hear, and he reports this after 3 days or so of delirium or illness close to death.

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*Questions about how one feels toward another are wholly subjective, but are legitimate questions that may go to bias.

[Zzyzx]

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Christian scholars and theologians acknowledge that the identity of gospel writers is unknown, that none can be shown to have had personal knowledge of events or conversations about which they wrote, their sources of information are not identified, and even Paul/Saul (the primary contributor to the NT) is only claimed to "know" Jesus psychologically (or magically) by way of a "vision" (or hallucination or delusion or fantasy).

Thus, Christianity is based upon stories and claims that cannot be distinguished from rumor, hearsay, legend, fable, myth, folklore, fantasy, or even fraud.

Many who would not base their ideas and actions upon such flimsy "evidence" (produced by promoters or salesmen) in the real world will accept it as "gospel truth" if wrapped in religious garments / traditions / teachings / indoctrination.