Is eye witness testimony enough?

[Justin108]

The whole Bible basically relies either on claims of divine experience or eye witness claims. But are these enough?

If you willingly accept the claims made by these men, then on what grounds do you reject the claims made by people who believe they were abducted by aliens? On what grounds do you reject the claims of people who hear voices? On what grounds do you reject the claims of Bigfoot sightings?

How do you choose which eye witnesses to believe?

[GADARENE]

"The synoptic gospels are anonymous documents and do not claim authorship. I challenge you to support your claim."

who wrote them, any ideas? they didn't write themselves! where do you think they were written? how many borrowed, stolen ideas did the author(s) use?

how did these con artists coordinate their stories? were they concerned they might get busted if there weren't enough similarities among their stories? how many were in on the original deal? did they start out planning to write just one fictional account and only later decided to go with more? where did they get the time to come up with all the wild stories and to hand write all they decided to throw in and the means to buy all the paper and ink? did they have financial backing do you think? what was their ultimate goal in pulling off this fraud? how did they decide to call the main character jesus? did any one report them for conspiring to perpetrate a fraud, do you think?

what was their motive? any ideas?

before you dismiss this body of work, you need to show scientifically, i'm afraid, that it likely appeared randomly, no beginning, you know, like the universe.

[Goat]

Generally speaking, when witnesses give an account, we can rarely verify ALL of it, but if we can verify some of his account, then its generally considered that the remainder is accurate, though issues of humanity give rise to further questions.

So if a shop owner who was robbed says "a man came in with a gun and took all the money from the register then he ran out and climed on his pet dragon and flew away".

Since this is clearly an argument form absurdity and deals with nothing written about how historians and lawyers deal with eye-witness statement, I am simply going to ignore it.

It's the same level of absurdity as someone claiming 'Jesus died and got resurrected'. Or 'I saw Elvis after he died', or 'I got abducted by aliens.'.

[stubbornone]

Generally speaking, when witnesses give an account, we can rarely verify ALL of it, but if we can verify some of his account, then its generally considered that the remainder is accurate, though issues of humanity give rise to further questions.

So if a shop owner who was robbed says "a man came in with a gun and took all the money from the register then he ran out and climed on his pet dragon and flew away".

Since this is clearly an argument form absurdity and deals with nothing written about how historians and lawyers deal with eye-witness statement, I am simply going to ignore it.

It's the same level of absurdity as someone claiming 'Jesus died and got resurrected'. Or 'I saw Elvis after he died', or 'I got abducted by aliens.'.

Once again, a simple dismissive one liner devoid of evidence or argumentation.

There is a known, defined, and sourced definition of an argument from absurdity, which has been repeatedly provided. It is in reference with the serial denial of atheists who simply look for any excuse to deny, much like ardent Creationists deny Evolution.

For some reason, denial of evolution drive you batty but the denial of religious claims is rationalism itself - please reference earlier comments about the proliferation of double standards in modern atheism.

Now, I am afraid that you will have to meet your same requirements, wherein you have to prove that Jesus was not resurrected. Certainly it is an extraordinary claim, but it is one that is referenced by many eye witnesses ... and although its not conclusive, its no more logical to doubt them than it is to affirm them ...

The best you can get is faith based doubt.

Why that is better than faith based affirmation that gives us the rich teaching of Jesus and a relationship with a loving God instead of permanent curmudgeon status?

I guess everyone is entitled to their position.

[stubbornone]

Where in my post did I mention or even allude to the Jesus myth theory??? I reject the Jesus myth theory completely and have argued against it myself in the past. Please try to read more carefully.

The issue is with your claim that the synoptic gospels were written by eyewitnesses. This is not the case. They are hearsay.

#1 - when you question the consensus of scholars on the subject, what exactly do you think you are raising?

You are the one questioning the consensus of scholars that the synoptic gospels were not written by eyewitnesses, not me. Also, I request that you stop making insinuations about the Jesus Myth. There is a lot of room between "the synoptic gospels were not written by eyewitnesses" and "Jesus never existed."

#2 - You do so again when you dismiss the synoptic gospels as heresay, even though their claimed authorship clearly places them as eye witnesses and they are written in the time frame to be just that.

The synoptic gospels are anonymous documents and do not claim authorship. I challenge you to support your claim.

Unfortunately, there are FOUR eye witness statements that are all in agreement.

Even if the gospels were written by eyewitnesses (a position scholars do not generally support), they cannot be considered independent verification of the events of the life of Jesus because they are not independent documents - they copy from each other quite explicitly.

You have absolutely committed the fallacy of composition.

Additionally, simply screaming fallacy here does not allow us to address the issue at hand. What are we to with eye witness statements when we cannot verify the whole? Scream fallacy? We should assume that anything we cannot verufy in AN EYE WITNESS STATEMENT must be lying?

No. Anything we cannot verify in a witness statement is not assumed to be false, it is simply not verified. When you assume it to be true, you commit the fallacy of composition.

Now, you get to explain why your faith drives to to conclude, without evidence, that these statements are lies.

They must be lies because your faith tell you so? Convincing, eh?

I have not concluded, claimed or implied that they must be lies. I have concluded that we do not know whether or not the statements are true. You are committing the strawman fallacy.

1. If the sources all agree about an event, historians can consider the event proved.
2. However, majority does not rule; even if most sources relate events in one way, that version will not prevail unless it passes the test of critical textual analysis.
3. The source whose account can be confirmed by reference to outside authorities in some of its parts can be trusted in its entirety if it is impossible similarly to confirm the entire text.

Fallacy of composition. This is not how historians deal with sources. I challenge you to show that "Harvard" or any mainstream historians do history as you describe. A source claiming the fallacy of composition to be acceptable in the analysis of historical documents would be a good start.

No, they do have claimed authorship, that authorship cannot be fully verified.

Its little deliberate misstatements like that which give me pause when dealing with atheism about the history of my faith.

There is a powerful motive for bias in atheist examination of the historical record, a lack of objectivity, and little twists like that above ... well, why should I take your analysis serious at all when it clearly has deliberately misleading twists peppered throughout it?

Furthermore, we do not assume ancient records are false because claimed authorship cannot be fully verified. When we have many documents that attest to the same things, and those whose authorship we CAN verify, like the Letters of Paul, verify much of the text in the uncertain authorship texts, we assume that th record is accurate ... not false.

In short, you are changing the accepted historical method for no other reason than because it conflicts with your precious faith and the clearly strong bias IT IS putting into your analysis.

You can scream fallacy all you want, but the elimination of bias is something that all historians strive for - you are clearly no historian.

And please bear in mind, before you run off screaming about my biases, that I was an atheist when I first began my examination of the historical record for Jesus. By attempting to eliminate my then atheistic biases, I discovered that many of the atheistic rejection of faith that I had taken for granted were false, induced by biases seeking to confirm their own preconceptions. By eliminating biases, we eliminate atheism's view of much of history ... including Hitchen's latest rant about historical violence in religion.

Sucks to be atheist, but that is not a fallacy.

Finally, when someone is directly quoting the historical method and is a trained historian, your claims of fallacy and 'that's not how it works,' are sheer ignorance. No other way to say that. How exactly do you think historians deal with ancient manuscripts who authorship can often, thousands of years after the fact, not be verified? DO you think we just reject them? Or do we use them CRITICALLY?

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacie ... ading.html

In short, as these are the exact standards used by the professionals who write the histories of Jesus, indeed its an academic requirement to SPELL OUT IN THE TEXT how the author of the volume deals with the very questions you raise SO AS TO SET OUT A SET OF OBJECTIVE STANDARDS COMMON TO THE USAGE OF ALL EVIDENCE USED IN THE TEXT, is fallcious.

Its the fallacy of special pleading ... well, that may be good an dandy for Ceasar, but not Jesus!

That is your faith speaking. Its nothing more than, "Well there is no God, so Jesus cannot be the Son of God!."

And as we see, your analysis is both angry and wrong. When we embrace those two when analysis begins to question the preconceptions of our faith, who exactly is being fooled by the denial that this is the result of your faith's biases in regard to MY religion?

You seriously think atheism has none?

[Fuzzy Dunlop]

No, they do have claimed authorship, that authorship cannot be fully verified.

Where is authorship claimed? I challenge you a second time to provide evidence for this claim. If you cannot, please withdraw it.

Furthermore, we do not assume ancient records are false because claimed authorship cannot be fully verified. When we have many documents that attest to the same things, and those whose authorship we CAN verify, like the Letters of Paul, verify much of the text in the uncertain authorship texts, we assume that th record is accurate ... not false.

This is the fallacy of composition. It is also a strawman fallacy. My position is not that something is assumed to be false if we cannot verify it. My position is that if something cannot be verified then we do not know whether it is true or false.

In short, you are changing the accepted historical method for no other reason than because it conflicts with your precious faith and the clearly strong bias IT IS putting into your analysis.

I challenge you a second time to provide evidence that the fallacy of composition is acceptable in history as an academic discipline. If you cannot, please withdraw your claim.

[stubbornone]

No, they do have claimed authorship, that authorship cannot be fully verified.

Where is authorship claimed? I challenge you a second time to provide evidence for this claim. If you cannot, please withdraw it.

Seriously? Are you now adopting total ignorance of our faith as a basis of logical disagreement with it? You do know what an argument from ignorance is correct?

The gospel according to ... Mark. Luke ... sound familiar?

This is the fallacy of composition. It is also a strawman fallacy. My position is not that something is assumed to be false if we cannot verify it. My position is that if something cannot be verified then we do not know whether it is true or false.

#1 - You JUST claimed that it was false. Would you like me to quote you on it.

#2 - We CAN using the exact methodoly describes use critical analsyis to determine whether it is MOST likely true or MOST likely false.

I am constantly left aghast that many atheists, driven by evidence, will go to such great lengths to ignore it.

I challenge you a second time to provide evidence that the fallacy of composition is acceptable in history as an academic discipline. If you cannot, please withdraw your claim.

Its already been done. Its IN the rules of the historical method. Why are you asking for them yet again?

How else to do you think historians deal with events, except through statements that they otherwise would have to reject? And then we have little more an absurdity in which we cannot verify anything at all.

It is indeed a fallacy to say that because I am telling the truth now that I will ALWAYS tell the truth. However, if everything we can verify in a statement is true, then it becomes likely that those portions that we CANNOT verify, in a single statement, are most likely the truth as well.

I am sorry if you find simple common sense to be both fallacious and an affront to your faith.

[stubbornone]

Lets test fuzzies little fallacy shall we.

A woman comes into a police station covered in bruises. She writes out a statement that he husband just beat her (which is clearly in evidence by the bruises), and she claims that her husband also threatened to kill her by placing a gun to her head.

A neighbor also comes in and details the same beating and death threat. However, there is no gun registered to the owner, a search turns up nothing, and the husband denies both the beating and the threat, despite having a long record of domestic violence.

Would it be logical to assume that the wife and neighbor are telling the truth about the beating, which is evidenced by the bruises and general disarray of the house after the assault, but lying about the death threat because we cannot independently verify the statement with physical evidence?

According to fuzzy, it would be a logical fallacy to assume that the death threat took place.

Indeed the courts, based on such fallacious use of evidence, should deny a restraining order because the threat cannot be individually verified and is thus fallacious.

Is there a way to use eye-witness statement to arrive at conclusions or not?

The aptly named fuzzy test for you.

[Fuzzy Dunlop]

Where is authorship claimed? I challenge you a second time to provide evidence for this claim. If you cannot, please withdraw it.

Seriously? Are you now adopting total ignorance of our faith as a basis of logical disagreement with it? You do know what an argument from ignorance is correct?

The gospel according to ... Mark. Luke ... sound familiar?

"The gospel according to..." are labels that were applied after the fact to anonymous documents by people who did not write them. The documents do not claim eyewitness authorship.

This is the fallacy of composition. It is also a strawman fallacy. My position is not that something is assumed to be false if we cannot verify it. My position is that if something cannot be verified then we do not know whether it is true or false.

#1 - You JUST claimed that it was false. Would you like me to quote you on it.

If you are going to accuse me of holding such a position then yes, forum rules would require that you quote me.

#2 - We CAN using the exact methodoly describes use critical analsyis to determine whether it is MOST likely true or MOST likely false.

This is the fallacy of composition. Part of a document being true does not increase the likelihood of other parts of the document being true.

I challenge you a second time to provide evidence that the fallacy of composition is acceptable in history as an academic discipline. If you cannot, please withdraw your claim.

Its already been done. Its IN the rules of the historical method. Why are you asking for them yet again?

When did you post the "rules of the historical method"? Please reproduce the citation or provide a post number.

[Fuzzy Dunlop]

Lets test fuzzies little fallacy shall we.

A woman comes into a police station covered in bruises. She writes out a statement that he husband just beat her (which is clearly in evidence by the bruises), and she claims that her husband also threatened to kill her by placing a gun to her head.

By starting with an eyewitness claim you have already created an irrelevant scenario. Whether the synoptic gospels are written by eyewitnesses is the very point in contention.

[Justin108]

Generally speaking, when witnesses give an account, we can rarely verify ALL of it, but if we can verify some of his account, then its generally considered that the remainder is accurate, though issues of humanity give rise to further questions.

So if a shop owner who was robbed says "a man came in with a gun and took all the money from the register then he ran out and climed on his pet dragon and flew away".

Since this is clearly an argument form absurdity and deals with nothing written about how historians and lawyers deal with eye-witness statement, I am simply going to ignore it.

It's the same level of absurdity as someone claiming 'Jesus died and got resurrected'. Or 'I saw Elvis after he died', or 'I got abducted by aliens.'.

Once again, a simple dismissive one liner devoid of evidence or argumentation.

This is exactly what you did by refusing to respond to my scenario and just calling it absurd when it is directly relevant to the discussion. You simply cannot refute my reasoning so you look for ways out. But cower away all you like