I hear this claim quite a bit. There is “no evidence” for God or anything supernatural.
What is evidence? As a Trial Lawyer I have an understanding of evidence and what it is. I also think I have learned allot about how honest people can make mistakes from memory yet this does not mean their entire testimony should be thrown out. But let me give a legal definition.
The United States’ Federal Rules of Evidence defines relevant evidence. (Each state will have its own rules of evidence but this is pretty similar state to state.)
Rule 401 says:
“Relevant evidence” means evidence having any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence.
Is there much to argue against? On the whole I think it’s pretty good. “…having any tendency” suggests that that some evidence might have varying degrees of strength to different people. “Any” “tendency” seems pretty broad. But since I am well convinced that different reasonable people can often draw different conclusions from the very same piece of evidence I am fine with that.
I have long understood that you prove things to someone. And you need to know who your audience is and adjust your proof accordingly. If you prove something to no one, then you have not accomplished much.
It seems to me that the various New Testament accounts do provide some relevant evidence for Jesus’s miracles. Would we not agree that having these accounts tends to increase the probability that the resurrection happened than if we did not have these documents? So for example if we had none of these ancient accounts and I just got up in my closing argument and said “a person that lived 2000 years ago rose from the dead,” would we not think the case weaker? So yes the existence of these ancient documents does have some tendency to show the fact that is of consequence “is more probable… than it would be without the evidence.” They are almost certainly relevant evidence.
Is a miracle evidence that God exists? Well it might or might not be. In the case of Jesus miracles I think they are clearly evidence of the Christian God. Why? Because Jesus says he was sent from God and that it was by God’s power he can do supernatural things. And then he does them. Does that fit our definition of relevant evidence?
Consider if I had a trial on the issue of whether God exists and someone says well if God exists then prove it by performing a miracle! And sure enough I then say by Gods power I will raise this corpse from the dead and a dead person stands up and walks. Would this miracle have “any tendency” to make the existence of God more probable “than it would be without the evidence.” Of course, it would. The fact that the person asked for a miracle shows it has a tendency for him.
Plenty of atheists have asked for miracles as proof. So presumably it would have that tendency for them. Of course some might argue even that is not enough proof for them, but my case for God would be much stronger than if I offered no evidence at all, and just said in my closing argument “God exists so you should find for my side.” Therefore these miracles are evidence of God.
I think this is an important point to get people off the whole “No Evidence!” “No Evidence!” mantra we hear. There clearly is *some* evidence. Is it is enough evidence for you? How much evidence do you need? Are really the questions we are getting and that is a subjective matter. I discussed this in a prior blog here:
The evidence in the OJ Simpson criminal trial was not enough evidence to “prove” he was guilty beyond reasonable doubt to that jury. However the trial was televised and lots of people saw that very same evidence, and thought it was enough to “prove” his guilt beyond reasonable doubt. Both sides had plenty of relevant evidence to support their case but different people drew different conclusions from that same relevant evidence.
True and Reasonable 
Hello,
I thought I might post this here on your blog too, if you’d like to discuss this further.
Those are just stories with nothing supporting them. Do you also accept that the stories in the Qu’ran are true too without any external evidence? By your post, this is also “some” evidence. Why don’t you believe in Allah and Mohammed as his prophet? This is also relevant evidence. Miracles are claimed to have been done by various gods in their stories. Do you believe those stories with no external evidence? By your own words, these are also instances of relevant evidence and the tendency to support those claims. Would you explain why you don’t accept these stories as just as valid evidence?
As a trial lawyer, I know that you understand that if supposed eyewitness accounts differ, then there is reason to doubt such claims. There is no evidence that Jesus Christ even existed, much less was raised or any other of the miracles happened. We also have directly contradictory claims in the stories, in that claims made in one version preclude the claims that happen in another. This all makes the claims of the bible less and less trustworthy.
Now, if you could raise someone now, in front of witnesses, that is also evidence. Can you? As a Christian, can you do the miracles your savior promised you could do as a baptized believer in him? Indeed, someone could claim, “oh it was aliens” but it would be quite a bit more concrete than a set of stories that amount to no more than hearsay. It would go a very long way in convincing me that the Christian god exists, though I do admit I still would not worship it if the descriptions in the bible are accurate.
thanks for your response!
Hi and thanks for posting to my blog.
You say:
“Those are just stories with nothing supporting them. Do you also accept that the stories in the Qu’ran are true too without any external evidence?”
Ok they are stories but the question is whether they are true stories. After all some stories are true.
I do not think Evidence needs other external evidence to support it before it is considered evidence.
Also even if we only had one author giving an account of Jesus performing a miracle that would be some evidence. But in fact we have multiple authors giving accounts of miracles. The bible is several books.
Yes I think there is some evidence to support Islam. In some ways the evidence is better. But overall I think the Christian evidence is stronger. Like I said in my blog miracles can provide evidence of God or that someone came from God.
In Islam we have the splitting of the moon miracle and his saying the Quran itself is considered a miracle by them. But it is not clearly invoking the supernatural. I think there are one or 2 other vague references to what might be considered a miracle but generally speaking we do not have anything close to the documentation demonstrating clear miracles like we do with Jesus.
The 2 versions of God (Christian and Muslim) are not entirely compatible so I have to pick one.
There are some other reasons I reject islam but comparing the evidence in this way is a big reason.
“Miracles are claimed to have been done by various gods in their stories. Do you believe those stories with no external evidence? ”
Generally these miracles do not pass historical muster as well as the Christian miracles. When where they originally written? How far before the writing did the miraculous event take place? Are our copies close to when originals were written etc? Ehrman has a list of historical criteria he uses. I will be willing to consider such an analysis using Christian Scriptures and another religions scriptures if you would like.
“As a trial lawyer, I know that you understand that if supposed eyewitness accounts differ, then there is reason to doubt such claims.”
Ok. But that doesn’t mean we can’t ultimately decide in favor of one version. A independent witness will generally be more credible than a party who gives self serving testimony. There are too many factors to enumerate on how credibility is judged.
“There is no evidence that Jesus Christ even existed, much less was raised or any other of the miracles happened.”
Ok here it seems you are using a different definition of evidence than what the US federal government uses to explain relevant evidence. The accounts recorded in the scriptures are in fact evidence. I went through this in the above blog.
“We also have directly contradictory claims in the stories, in that claims made in one version preclude the claims that happen in another. This all makes the claims of the bible less and less trustworthy.”
Contradictions and inconsistencies can lead to a loss of credibility, no doubt. But I can tell you that I can pull 10 people who saw something 1 year ago and they will all get certain details wrong even if they have a good memory. I was unfortunately a potential witness in a case and I can tell you that I was pretty amazed at how I would mis-remember certain minor details. But on the main points my memory worked fine.
“Now, if you could raise someone now, in front of witnesses, that is also evidence. Can you?”
Ok I doubt it but, I don’t rule out the possibility of miracles.
Thanks for your comments.
Hello T&R. I’m Vel, though lots of people call me “Club”. Pardon the long post. I did want to do your reply justice. I try to be as clear as I can be and offer examples.
You are right, some stories are true. The way we know they are true is with evidence. For instance, I can tell a story that I went to the vet today to get my cat, who is sick and had to stay overnight because she was so angry that they couldn’t examine her without sedating her. All true and all supported by evidence. One can go talk to the vet, the vet’s assistants, the office people who could hear my cat yowl, examine my cat, see the $650 charge on my credit card, etc. I can also tell a story that I flew on a dragon that teleported me to the planet Pern, where I had a great adventure, and teleported me back just a second after I left. If you ask me for evidence, I can’t produce any. You just have to believe me. Do you? If not, then stories can’t be relied upon as evidence. And I am not going entirely with the legal definition but also with what is considered evidence in debate.
The bible stories are the claim, they aren’t the evidence. So they do need evidence to support them. In a criminal case, the claim would be “Suspect ‘x’ did activity ‘y’.” In the case of your religion, the claim is that Jesus Christ was some variant of divine being, born, lived, died and was resurrected. So, we have the suspect and the claimed activity. Now, we need the evidence to support the claim.
Do you have any?
We have unknown authors writing four versions (5 if you want to count the story in Acts) of the same story. It is held by various scholars, including Christian ones, that the stories were influenced by at least one source common to several of them. We have claims of occurrences in these stories that preclude the events in the other versions, for reasons we can only make educated guesses at. There is no way to determine which version is true or if *any* of them are true. For instance, the nativity story is either missing or contradictory, mentioning events that cannot happen, one precluding another or mentioning events that cannot be shown to have happened at all. The version that most Christians know doesn’t even occur in the bible, being a mishmash of what is there. For instance, the “wise men” don’t show up for months and there is nothing that says there are three.
There is no evidence for the other miracles either. No one noticed a legion’s worth of men (plus women and children) gathering outside of a Roman occupied city to hear a supposed preacher and eat fish/bread. No one noted the dead walking, an earthquake or the sun darkening. Christians have tried very hard to come up with evidence for these claims but they cannot agree on what time this supposed messiah died and what few similar events that could have happened do not align with the times claimed, nor did they happen at the same time. This happens with all of the bible stories, there is nothing to support them, not one of the miraculous events. I’ve just reviewed Exodus on my blog and it’s quite a failure in showing it actually happened too. It’s such a ridiculous story as is the creation story, the Noah flood, the tower of babel, etc.
The other holy books of the other religions also mention miracles, and we also have claims of miracles from other sources for those religions do, so we have the same supposed “evidence” as you claim. But you still don’t believe them, do you?
Having several books that still have only claims and no evidence is just like your religion. We can have several eyewitnesses, but if none of them agree, then their testimony is to be considered questionable, and must be support by other evidence. We don’t even have eyewitnesses because none of these people can be shown to have been that. Another problem is that these authors could, and seemingly have, been influenced by others, which is contamination of witnesses. My husband has chimed in and says that we have several books talking about Spider-man, from different authors. New York is a real city. Should I believe that Spider-man is real? It becomes Sagan’s dragon in his garage example.
If there is some evidence to support Islam, why are you not a Muslim? Why have you played Pascal’s Wager and chosen the Christian religion? As I have demonstrated above, the claims are the same, there are only stories, no evidence.
Oh my, the splitting of the moon. Nope, no evidence that ever happened. Same with the splitting of the sea in Exodus. It’s hilarious that you say that the qu’ran isn’t invoking the supernatural. That’s all it is asserting, that it was a miracle, not “transient magic” and not an illusion and the Hadith asserts it too. Again, we have nothing more than stories that support the miracles, just like you have. You have nothing else. The qu’ran also mentions other miracles. The magical noah flood, the splitting of the sea by Moses and the night journey are magical events claimed caused by Allah. They are a bit different than the versions in the bible (Moses being forced by an angel to put hot coals in his mouth, yeesh), and they are claims of miraculous events.
Now, seeing how neither your religion nor Islam has any better evidence than the next, I have no reason to believe in either. Your miracles do not pass historical musters either. There is nothing that says when these miracles occurred; no one can agree on when the events of the bible took place. When were your stories originally written? We know the approximate dates of the earliest copies we have were written but no idea when the stories originated or any dates for the events themselves. You have no idea if the copies we have were close to the originals. And anyone who has read Ehrman knows this. I would indeed like to see your analysis of Christian and Jewish stories with another religion’s stories. You may choose what you would like to use if you choose to go ahead with this.
You claim that we can ultimately decide in favor of one version of a set of stories. Yep, we can and we do that with how the story matches the evidence. We have none for your stories, only competing stories with no other evidence. Again, we have nothing to show that we have independent witnesses in the bible’s authors. That is a baseless assumption. And no, there are not “too many factors to enumerate” on how credibility can be judged. I know quite a few of them and your bible fails them. Anyone who learns how to do research learns how to determine credibility. Most universities and judges have nice handouts on how to determine credibility. The New York court have a nice pdf available on the ‘net http://www.nycourts.gov/judges/cji/1-General/CJI2d.Credibility.pdf .
Let me try to clarify again, claims of an occurrence are not evidence of that occurrence; they are conclusions drawn from facts e.g. evidence. A claim is “Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy.” It is not evidence just like “Jesus Christ resurrected” is not evidence. I do understand why you want to claim that the stories are evidence, because that is all you have. Testimony can indeed be evidence, but a testimony is a review of what are facts that can lead to a conclusion. This isn’t strict law, but how debates and discussions go (here’s a fairly good explanation of this: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/588/03/)
Contradictions and inconsistencies do lead to a loss of credibility. That’s why I find the bible to be nonsense. And I know that eyewitnesses can be confused. However, that is not what the bible, or Christians claim. You claim that the bible is inspired/written by your god and is an accurate transcription of the events therein. That’s quite different than a mortal prosecutor and defense who know that stories can be false or wrong. I do understand that Christians pick and choose what parts that they want to claim are right from their god and what parts are from humans. The problem is that you can’t agree which is what.
Another problem is that the “main points” are also contradictory. In my experience, Christians love to change their minds on what consists of “main points” and “minor points” when the inconsistencies of the bible are pointed out to them. The characters in the bible get their importance from events and funny how the events don’t match. For instance, who gets to the tomb first and what did they see? This is among the most important events in Christianity and the claims materially disagree with each other.
It’s intriguing that you doubt you can do the miracles promised to you by your god. It’s clear that you should be able to. But we still have plenty of people in hospitals despite all of the people who claim that their religion is true and that they are the right ones in how to practice it. There was a claim made by the bible and its character Jesus Christ, and now there is no evidence to support it.
Hi Vel, I don’t want to butt in too much between your discussion with T&R, but I thought I would toss in a quick perspective. I do sympathize with your case here which, to me, sounds like you want to say that there is no sufficient evidence for miracles. You might be in line with Sagan’s “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” and what we seem to have is just ordinary evidence.
Let me make one suggestion. First, if you have not already, look into historical cases for the resurrection. None of these are “because the bible says so” rather are based upon scholarly, historical arguments. There are dozens of apologists and historians who give an overview of this. I personally like Gary Habermas. Also, NT Wright is probably the world’s top first century historian of church history who also has unique arguments for the resurrection. And, there are revolutionary scholarly arguments about the nature of eyewitness testimony in the gospels given by Richard Bauckham in the last decade. He argues many incredible things like 1) the gospels really were written by those who it was attributed to, 2) there is evidence for eyewitness tradition rather than telephone-game oral tradition, and more.
It’s important to note that the bible is also a historical document that can be analyzed as such. I find that it stands the test above the Koran and the Book of Mormon. I mean, just compare the lives of Muhammad, Joseph Smith, and Paul. Who was motivated by what? Who was motivated by sex and power and who was motivated because they thought they had been given divine revelation?
Anyway, I’ve said too much already. Take care!
Hi, thinker. Nice photo of you with the henge. You are more than welcome to butt in.
From my viewpoint, the problem is that there is no evidence, not even “ordinary” evidence, for miracles.
I’ve been debating theists for about 20 years now, so I have looked at all of the claims of historical evidence for the resurrection more than a few times. Unlike you, I find that many of them are indeed using the argument “the bible says so”, especially Habermas. Habermas, Wright, Craig, etc., I’ve read them all. And none of them mount a convincing argument to me. I was a Christian, Prebyterian sect, and I’ve read the bible in its entirety as a believer and as an atheist. I have a pretty good background in Christianity and its apologists. I read them when I was losing my faith, as I did the bible. I also prayed, and still I have reached the conclusion of atheism.
We have nothing but stories about the resurrection, no evidence beyond that. We also know that the authors were not eyewitnesses, we have no idea when they were written, and there is the problem that they disagree in major points. These contradictions are not just different versions but that the claimed events preclude the other claimed events from happening e.g. it has to be one or the other. I’ve seen a lot of claims of harmonization and they are quite the exercises in acrobatics to make completely different stories fit together.
For instance, Habermas declares that Jesus appeared alive before his followers after his supposed death, and that consists of a miracle. One can’t even show that JC existed, much less that he appeared, no matter how many people you wish to claim saw JC. Habermas makes an a priori assumption, JC must exist, then a claim of an event with JC that has no evidence and then calls it a miracle. I could make a similar a priori assumption that Thor exists and then claim that it was a miracle because it thunders and it’s obvious that Thor causes thunder.
Habermas also insists that 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 is a historical reliable claim. It isn’t; it has nothing to support it except the bible, which becomes a circular argument especially when one considers the dates assigned to the various bits of the bible. Habermas also claims that Paul saw Jesus. Again, no evidence of this at all. Only the claim in the bible. Claims need evidence to support them, the claim is not evidence in itself in this case. Lots of believers, including non-Christians have visions, so there is no reason to believe in this as evidence either, unless you wish to believe everyone who has ever claimed to have had a vision as evidence for those gods too. We also have direct contradictions in Paul’s story, evidently by Paul himself, of what happened when. And we have Paul acknowledging that there are other versions of Christianity around, because he curses anyone who disagrees with his version. All we have is Paul saying he’s right and no one else is and again, no evidence. Wright is similarly awful when he tries to make the claim that the Christ story is somehow “unique” as if that alone makes it true. It’s not unique in the idea of a risen god, and uniqueness makes nothing true. If that were true, then Scientology may as well be considered true. We also have the apologists who can’t agree if JC rose as a spirit or in the flesh. Since no one has evidence, I am not inclined to believe any of them. There is no reason to think any of them are right.
Thinker, if you think Habermas or any other apologist has a great argument, perhaps you can tell me which one you find the best. Perhaps the one that convinced you to return to Chrisitanity?
As for the bible being a historical document, I believe that is only true that it is a part of history. Its claims for its essential events are not supported with any external evidence, evidence that should be quite easy to find. However, Christians and others have been looking for over a thousand years and have found nothing to corroborate them. No flood, no exodus, no tower of babel, no genesis, no nativity and no resurrection. It is nothing more historical than the Qu’ran or the Book of Mormon. All make baseless claims with no evidence at all. The moon did not split, the sea did not split, there was no magical flood, nor any woman who came from a rib. There were no people wearing steel breastplates in the Americas, nor were there any golden tablets with special glasses or stone tablets from a god on a mountain in a magical golden box.
The bible stories just sound more plausible because we were raised with them and we were told by people we had some actual reason to trust that these stories were real.
It seems that you have decided that you know what motivated everyone, and you have decided, with no evidence that only Paul is pristine, not worried about power, except when he was cursing others and telling people to listen to no one but him. A Muslim would say the same about your Paul, and a Mormon would be just as sure as you that Joseph Smith got his message right from God. From my viewpoint, the argument can be made that all of them were motivated by power, if not sex. Can you tell me that you know for sure that Smith and Muhammed weren’t just as sincere as you think Paul was? Or JC for that matter? As an atheist, it always bemuses me when theists insist that only their version is correct and they have nothing better than anyone else.
Vel,
Are you sure that there is not even ordinary evidence for miracles? Have you engaged the book, Miracles, by Craig Keener? Or are you just asserting this because you think the more forcefully you assert it, the more likely it is true?
I’m glad that you’ve looked at some historical cases for the resurrection, I thought maybe you had. Not everyone finds them convincing, I get that. I even respect that. A few points here. 1) You don’t seem to understand how these historical arguments work if you say that “Habermas declares that Jesus appeared alive”. The disciples testified to Jesus’ appearances and this forms the basis of the pre-Pauline Creed. It is testimony. And, they rethought their entire Jewish theology around this and it ultimately cost them a lifetime of persecution and then their very lives. The historical datum is that the disciples sincerely believed and testified to Jesus appearing after his death, so we have to take this seriously. 2) You say the pre-Pauline Creed (1 Cor 15:3ff) is not historically reliable. Please prove to me that this testimony is not historically reliable, because your word against the fact that it made its way into the canon of history amounts to not even a weak argument, rather just an assertion. 3) You also assert using the bible is circular reasoning, yet you use the bible to disprove the bible. You are either too foolish to know what circular reasoning is, or blinded by your own arrogance. 4) Saying that Paul just had a vision is completely missing vital parts of Paul’s testimony. For one, it is not clear if it should be classified as a vision since he puts his experience on par with the disciples, but despite this, a vital part of Paul’s testimony is that even if he hadn’t had this experience, he investigated the Jesus story in Jerusalem with the apostles. 5) You misrepresent NT Wright’s case, which is not surprising at this point. Wright’s case is that the particular shape of religion rising out of Judaism depends on the truth of the resurrection, not that “Jesus stories are unique”. Quite a bit more sophisticated.
It’s my fault that I did not explain what I meant by examining motivations of Joseph Smith and Muhammad and Paul. For now, I will cede this point because it may take too much space to develop sufficiently.
Ultimately, we don’t have “just stories” about the resurrection, we have testimony and there is a massive difference here. One more point. Your assertion that the gospel authors or Paul were not eyewitnesses is just an arrogant claim. I won’t accept it unless you have an argument to prove they were not eyewitnesses. And, the alleged contradictions you cite (disproving the bible with the bible; circularly), even when I was an atheist I was not impressed. This is grasping for straws rather than trying to understand historical testimony. It’s bowing down and worshiping atheist propaganda. And, the best part is (I’m sure you know) Bart Ehrman, the New Testament scholar who likes to emphasize differences between the gospels and who is agnostic, wrote an entire book to prove the existence of Jesus and this really angered the skeptical community. I’m sure you know all this though, yet you seemed to indicate doubt that Jesus existed. To me this can only mean one thing. For 20 years you must have been debating the wrong points with theists. Here is where I would start: you will never have knowledge of God again until you discover the intellectual arrogance of your arguments. Until you can tell the difference between an assertion and evidence, and learn the nature of testimony, you will never have knowledge of God. And, maybe you don’t care. Apatheism, anti-theism, whatever. I’m just telling you what I think at this point because I respect you.
-Brandon
Hi Brandon,
This is a long post. You are welcome to discuss it on my blog, if you wish, so we don’t clog up our host’s comments. I have it saved and could post it there if you would like. I may use this discussion as a blog post.
Yep, I am quite sure that there is not even ordinary evidence for miracles. Now, I am using the definition of evidence as: facts that can be used to support a claim. We have stories that miracles occur, caused by all sorts of gods. Those stories are claims and must be supported by facts. For instance, I can make a claim that the goddess Sekhmet has healed me of some disease, say cancer. To support this claim I need to show causation and result. I would have to show that I had cancer, and that this cancer disappeared because of divine intervention. I could do this by direct evidence: medical tests, a lump of tumor, cat scans, etc. I could have testimony from my doctor and experts in the field. I would also have to show that the occurrence was caused by Sekhmet, that my prayers/sacrifices/etc to her got her attention and no other possibility caused the effect. I could do this by duplicating the circumstances and getting the same effect. Theists have not been able to do this at all, no matter what the religion. They all claim miracles and make the same attempts to support them. What a theist will believe for his religion, he will not for another. Yes, I have read the book by Keener ( I do read a *lot*). Keener mentions quite a few stories of miracles, but he does little to support them. His basic idea seems that he wants supernatural nonsense accepted as a possibility, despite the fact that there is no evidence for it at all. I have no more reason to accept that demand from a Christian than I do from a animist or a Wiccan.
You make the positive claim that magic exists, it’s up to you to support it. Keener makes baseless claims repeatedly. One of the claims is that an amputated leg supposed grew back. Evidence presented? None. And despite the claims of prayers answered and miracles occurring, no one ever gets a limb restored. We have plenty of folks in VA hospitals, in cancer wards, that have lost limbs and none of them get prayers answered. Here’s where lots of excuses are offered on why prayers don’t work for them but supposedly work for people where no one can actually witness such things. I also found it amusing that Keener does his best to ignore studies that show prayer doesn’t lead to miracles. He wants to claim that his god intentionally didn’t allow the 2006 Templeton Foundation study to work ““Would God favor someone or not because they belonged to a control group?” He also tries to claim that miracles can’t be tested because they are one time events. Which isn’t true at all if we are to believe the many claims of miracles that healed the same things, like at Lourdes for example. Indeed, if your bible is true and every baptized believer of JC can do miracles just like JC (the end of Mark), then we should have plenty of chances to see miracles. We don’t. Another story I saw in this book was that a woman supposedly started walking after having her spinal cord cut. The problem with the story is that she doesn’t walk without help and still requires modern medicine. A “partial miracle” is like saying something is kinda sterile. He also make some hilarious strawman attacks, that skeptics shouldn’t be so dismissive of such claims that fail and “really” go after the doctors who misdiagnose things. So, no, Brandon, your attempt at accusing me of just asserting things isn’t true. It is unfortunate that you felt you had to do that.
For someone who claims to respect me, you make some curious comments. I do understand how Habermas’ claims don’t work as historical arguments. The bible stories are nothing but hearsay at best. They are not evidence that JC existed or that anyone saw him after he was dead. We have no reason to believe in stories told long after the supposed events. You are also trying to make the old argument that this nonsense has to be true because people were persecuted for believing in it. If that were the case, this would mean that any religion ever that was persecuted for its beliefs was really true. This would mean that the religion of Aten or Scientology or Mormonism are as true as your religion. Are they?
So what if the disciples sincerely believed in something? That doesn’t make that something true. If it did, then Santa Claus would be real because children really do believe in him. The Heaven’s Gate people really sincerely believed that aliens were behind Comet Hale-Bopp and would take them away. They believed so sincerely that they killed themselves because of what they believed. Should we have taken them seriously or not?
The supposed pre-pauline creed (It has not been shown definitively to be so, though it probably is) is historically unreliable because there is no evidence that supports its claims: JC’s existence, JC’s burial, JC’s resurrection, JC’s appearances. It made it into history because some people believed it, that ‘s all. That does not make it a true claim. We also have in “the canon of history” that Emperor Vespasian cured people by his spit, that the Buddhist Ichadon’s severed head flew around in 527 CE, etc. I don’t think any of those claims are true or reliable either but they are present in history. Reliable means to be trusted. Again, we have nothing to support the claims of the bible except for the bible. Do you accept the claims of Islam becaue the Qu’ran says they are true and that believers say that they are true? If not, why not? If so, then why aren’t you Muslim?
You again are wrong, Brandon. I do not only use the bible to disprove the bible. I use the bible to show that the bible is not what Christians claim it is, the supposed word of their god. Then I use the lack of evidence for all of its essential events, and can show evidence for events that happened in place of those supposed events. You have created a strawman to attack.
Saying Paul had a vision is what Paul supposedly said, Brandon. Paul also told different versions of his story, something that makes it less than trustworthy. If Paul existed, and probably someone like him did, of course he would put his claims on par with the supposed apostles. And Paul claims to have investigated the story of JC with the apostles. Nothing supports this, including Paul’s ignorance of the claims of the gospels. Paul claims JC a descendent of David; not without Joseph as his father. One of the most interesting things in Paul’s writings is that he mentions not one of JC’s teachings or miracles. We get nothing of JC’s work.
I do not misrepresent Wright’s case. That “particular shape” is that the story of JC is unique. It is again the argument that since people believed it, it must be true. “Why should Jesus be any more than one of the most remarkable of them {other messiah claimants}? The answer must hinge upon the resurrection. If nothing happened to the body of Jesus, I cannot see why any of his implicit or explicit claims should be regarded as true. What is more, I cannot as a historian see why anyone would have continued to belong to his movement and regard him as its messiah.” – Wright , The Historical Jesus and Christian Theology Another quote from that “We must: renounce literalism, whether fundamentalist or scholarly.” Which is amusing when literalism is perfectly fine if Wright wants it,, but only symbolism if he finds it inconvenient. And again, there is nothing to indicate that the resurrection story is literal and true. Wright likes to claim that no Jew of the 1st century would have accepted JC as the messiah if he wasn’t resurrected. Being that there are still Jews, that’s quite true and no reason to believe that JC existed as Christians claim. I can read Wright, and what I have said is what he says. One can see it here: http://ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Historical_Problem.htm
Your claim about the motivations of Smith andMuhammed was baseless. You could have no knowledge of this, only an assumption that you need to make to keep your beliefs intact. And you have a whole blog where you can develop the argument, if you wish.
Yes, we do have just stories of the resurrection. All we have is the bible. We have no external evidence of it at all. We have the same “evidence” eg. “testimony” for other religions and you claim that those religions are not true. There is no massive difference at all.
There is no evidence at all that Paul or the anonymous writers of the gospels were eyewitnesses. If you have evidence of this, show it. I can give evidence to the contrary. If you think that someone saying they did something is in incontrovertible evidence, then I certainly hope you are never on a jury. Testimony can be evidence and it is always compared to other evidence. You have nothing else than hearsay.
If they were eyewitnesses, why the differences in what is claimed to have happened. One major claim is the weeping JC in Gesthemane. The story doesn’t appear in all of the gospels. One problem with it is that no one witnessed it at all, if one is to believe the bible story. In the one gospel that doesn’t mention it, JC is not worried at all about the cruxifiction. You cannot have a character desperately afraid *and* having no problem with things in the *same* scene. What did the two men cruxified with Jesus say? Who got to the tomb first? What did they see? What happened with the apostles afterwards, where they terrified for their lives or did they go right back to Jerusalem and celebrate in the temple? If there were eyewitnesses, there would not be complete disagreement in these instances. Indeed, one would think that if the gospels were written by the apostles, they’d have mention themselves being at the tomb with the rest. They don’t. Christians don’t even know where this tomb is, the site of the one ultimately important part of their religion.
It’s funny to watch you claim that I am using circular reasoning and decrying what you have done yourself. I do not care what impresses or doesn’t impress you, Brandon. There are contradictions and your acceptance of them makes them no less real. Your claims of historical testimony fail when the testimonies disagree. It is not “atheist propaganda” that your bible contradicts itself. Anyone can read the bible and may determine it for themselves.
Bart Ehrman made a case for a historical Jesus, a man who was not divine, who did not do miracles, and who was nothing different from any other claimant as messiah. I’ve read his books too and know your claims about them are less than truthful, as are your claims about the “skeptical community”. I have no problem in agreeing that there could have been an itinerant rabbi named Joshua ben Joseph who thought he was the messiah. Do you worship this possible man or part of the Trinity? If it’s the Jesus Christ of the Trinity, Ehrman’s arguments and those of others don’t support that at all.
I haven’t been debating the wrong points at all, Brandon. I have been debating the exactly right points with them because when someone says that I shouldn’t use these arguments, and they can’t answer them, I know I am on the right track. I never will have knowledge of your god as a real being because it isn’t. I am not intellectually arrogant at all, but that is a common accusation by a Christian when they can’t answer the problems of their religion and want to insist that I have to accept their claims without consideration. Another theist could make the same claim against you, that you are intellectually arrogant not to accept their baseless claims.
I look at the evidence, including testimony, compare it to other evidence and proceed from there; I do not start with an assumption as you do. As I have said, it wasn’t because of not trying to find this god again that I am an atheist. I very much know what the difference is between an assertion and evidence. An assertion is that Jesus Christ, son of God, exists. Evidence is facts that can support that claim, not stories. If stories and belief are enough to establish existence, then all of the gods ever exist. I doubt if you accept that. You may be telling me I’m wrong because you respect me. However, until you can show evidence for your stories, there is no reason to doubt the evidence that indicates that you and every other theist is wrong. I do not play Pascal’s wager and I have no reason to be afraid of the bogeyman.
I am guessing you may decide that this post is too long to respond to. No problem, I’ve got that answer before too.
Vel, no, this is not too long to respond to (I’ve had much longer comments to respond to with my Finnish atheist friend, Rautakyy). But, if I am to enter a dialogue of this magnitude, I would like more clear endpoints so that we are not ships passing in the night. This is the proposition I would defend: you are making assertions and arbitrarily defining terms to meet your goal (at least thus far, which cannot represent your entire worldview) and most likely out of intellectual arrogance rather than stupidity. I do not care to defend the truth of, say, the resurrection, because we would never agree on philosophies and methodologies to build up to that point.
Why would I want to defend that proposition? It is certainly not because I am more cerebral and it is not because being the ever-criticizing contrarian is fun, rather it has to do with two factors I hold to be true with a rather strong conviction. First, the nature of arguments is that they are all flawed. Arguments and counterarguments are like snakes devouring field mice whose ravenous practice wiped out the field mice. Soon the snakes begin eating each other, then die of starvation, and we are left with a heap of bones. Is this a bit postmodernist of me? Well yes. But, I think there is something true about it as ironic as that sounds. Just give me an argument and I will search and expose its flaws. We humans are all lost in this mystery, and the sooner we realize this, the sooner we become intellectually humble, which brings me to my next point. I take intellectual humility to be a virtuous and I think this fits many paradigms you would be friendly towards: skepticism and free thinking in particular. It also fits Christian theism as arrogance is highly criticized even as a root of many sins. And, quite often Christian apologetics is guilty of intellectual arrogance. I am happy to let the sword cut both ways.
One last thing I can’t help myself from addressing. I too am not persuaded by Pascal’s Wager, however not because God’s wrath is not coming. Rather because you cannot game the system. If God really is who they say, your mind and heart will be pierced to their core and your actions, whether good or evil, will be judged fairly. It is something that I think rightfully should invoke fear, because there is no escape when truth is revealed from our deepest layer of self. Our arrogance and hate will be exposed and we will have no defense and know that what happens next is justified.
Cool that you have a Finnish friend. Sure, let’s establish end points.
You say that I am “you are making assertions and arbitrarily defining terms to meet your goal (at least thus far, which cannot represent your entire worldview)” Hmmm, I am curious on how you will support these claims. But go ahead.
I think we could agree on methodologies for defending the truth of anything but your religion’s claims. Those always seem to get a special pass, because I would guess that we could agree on how to figure out if Huldufolk (Iceland’s fairy variety) exist.. You did start out claiming that I should read various apologists’claims about how they can prove the resurrection, so you certainly do appear to want to defend the truth of that proposition. That is what I have been arguing against. I will keep doing that if warranted. I will also contest that your claim that I am making assertions and arbitrarily defining terms to meet my goal is false. You may present you evidence and I will present mine.
It’s rather curious that you claim that all arguments are flawed as if that is a surprise. They may be flawed but that doesn’t mean that they don’t get to facts and things that are true. And yep, that’s a classic post modernist claim so that you don’t have to actually argue for their points and try to claim that everyone can have their own truths. They can’t; if they could, then I could ask you to hold a bar of white hot steel and you wouldn’t be burned to the bone. Your argument seems to claim that I am intellectually arrogant to say I know that white hot steel will hurt me. I certainly don’t think so; and you would find that out quite quickly.
There are things we don’t know *yet*, and there is no reason to throw up our hands and say “It’s a mystery, so god did it.” We constantly find out more about this world and that is not from being “intellectually humble.” It is saying “Run and find out.” It’s dangerous but we gain all we have from that.
Christianity and the Judaism before it makes a virtue of obedience and ignorance; don’t question, don’t learn, depend on this god for everything. I find it hypocritical to claim such things are so great and then make yourself comfortable on the backs of others who do not find your “humbleness” worth anything but who do the hard work and heavy lifting to make things better. As you can tell, I disagree with you in the most basic way possible.
There is nothing to say that this god exists or that it would judge fairly. The bible can’t quite decide on what might save one nor can “they” decide on what this god wants or what it “really” is. Most Christians claim that one is judged on one singular thing: did you accept Jesus as savior. If not, you are damned to eternal torture or, at best, death. Nothing else makes a difference, if you reject this supposed savior or do not know him at all. This should invoke fear, because no amount of good deeds will help and we are at the mercy of a god no different than Zeus. And if one goes with Romans 9, some people are intentionally damned and can’t even accept this savior, to serve as examples, just like the Pharaoh. There is no truth to be revealed, only being used as a slave to this god. Brandon, you seem intent on calling me arrogant and hateful. Do you mean to do this? And do you think a finite action by a finite being deserves “what happens next” from a being that supposedly made us as it wanted? Do I deserve to be damned?
I look forward to you supporting your claim.
Vel,
I crafted this response to sort of explain myself better, then support my claim without looking backwards towards your longer comment I did not address yet. If you want to move this conversation to your blog like you mentioned earlier, I am happy to participate there. It is an important conversation.
“Brandon, you seem intent on calling me arrogant and hateful. Do you mean to do this?”
No, Vel. I am not calling you these things without knowing you. Judging by your blog you are a nice person, I would probably have a drink at your club and find your dieselpunk clothes are fun and cool and dance to Star Wars music with your family and cringe at the guardian angel necklace with you. What I am criticizing is very specific. It has to do with intellectual arrogance which is a specific kind of arrogance. It is an argument or counterargument that is just a little too hungry. It is assertions. Misrepresentations. It is a lack of charity towards one’s intellectual opponents and no respect for the base human condition of unknowing.
“You did start out claiming that I should read various apologists’ claims about how they prove the resurrection, so you certainly do appear to want to defend the truth of that proposition.”
It is more complicated than this. I suggested you look into something if you had not already, not because these are flawless arguments, but because they work against your ideas and are worth considering despite flaws. You thought they were worth looking at since have engaged them, correct? Actually, what I argued for is your seeming lack of understanding of these arguments and use of assertions which I think most likely stems from intellectual arrogance. If you want to argue against them specifically with me, then give me a good counterargument. Don’t misrepresent NT Wright by quote-mining, when I know how frequently his argument is caricatured as “uniqueness”. I could sit in your position and do a better job than you are doing, and you know why? It has nothing to do with cerebral power. It has all to do with a certain intellectual humility that your worldview seems to lack. And, I don’t blame this on you as a character flaw, at least not yet. You are probably the socially constructed product of the neoatheist movement. There is a larger cultural force at work indoctrinating people.
“you claim that all arguments are flawed as if that is a surprise. They may be flawed. . . And yep, that’s a classic post modernist claim so that you don’t have to actually argue. . .”
Wait a second. You just basically agree with me, then say I’m posturing to avoid arguing? That’s disingenuous. I’m happy to argue against your atheist arguments, but not because I have special access to the truth, rather because you don’t either and that’s what I want to show.
“Christianity and the Judaism before it makes a virtue of obedience and ignorance. . .”
This is a good example of an assertion. You just say it, expect me to believe it. As if you are an expert handing out atheist dogma from on high. What evidence do you have that these religions make a virtue of these, specifically ignorance? And, what relevance does this have with me? Are you strawmaning me? Are you just being an internet troll to upset me? I mean, look, slow down, be charitable, and develop your argument. Let’s see how good you can make it.
“This should invoke fear, because no amount of good deeds will help and we are at the mercy of a god no different than Zeus”
Again, another assertion. No respect for Christian or pagan theology, just a sentence flung together out of thin air either out of arrogance or ignorance or something worse like trolling. How are the Christian deity and Zeus similar and different and why is this relevant? Educate me if you know something I don’t.
“And if one goes with Romans 9, some people are intentionally damned. . .”
Vel, I disagree with your interpretation of Romans 9. If you want to develop a case for your interpretation, please do so. This is something I would argue against.
Hi Vel I am working slowly working my way through your comments. And by the way I am happy you are both posting here in my comment section as I think both of you are raising good points.
I haven’t finished reading everything and have more to say on what I have read but here you try a new definition:
“Now, I am using the definition of evidence as: facts that can be used to support a claim. We have stories that miracles occur, caused by all sorts of gods. Those stories are claims and must be supported by facts. For instance, I can make a claim that the goddess Sekhmet has healed me of some disease, say cancer. To support this claim I need to show causation and result. I would have to show that I had cancer, and that this cancer disappeared because of divine intervention. I could do this by direct evidence: medical tests, a lump of tumor, cat scans, etc. I could have testimony from my doctor and experts in the field. ”
This comment is interesting. Because we commonly call expert testimony “opinion testimony” as opposed to fact testimony. So if you are to hold to your definition we would not be able to hear from the experts. That is one problem with your definition.
The other problem is that it sort of pushes the issues of which testimony is factual. Let’s consider a simple traffic case where someone ran a red light. If one witness says it was a red light and the other witness says was a green light they can’t both be factual. If we assume the light worked properly one claim must not be factual. So is the judge going to decide which one is factual (and therefore “evidence”) and not let the other person testify to the jury?
What exactly do you mean by evidence being “facts”? Generally a “fact” is something that happened in the past or exist in the present. We generally use evidence to find out what in fact happened not the other way around. How can we bring the past into the courtroom if there was no video? Sure we can have people testify about it – but isn’t that what you call “stories?” We can bring the traffic light in but that won’t tell us who had the red light. It will be no help at all. We have to listen to the “stories” and make a decision on what we will believe. What are the motives? Are they consistent? Are they otherwise reliable? How many people saw it one way or another? Etc. These factors come in to help us weigh the evidence in history and in court. But both rely heavily on peoples accounts of what happened. We don’t just throw out what people say because there is no physical object that corroborates what they say. Sometimes there is important physical evidence but certainly not always.
Hi Vel my name is Joe
Thank you for the well-considered response. Let me offer you my views on the points you raise.
You say:
“For instance, I can tell a story that I went to the vet today to get my cat, who is sick and had to stay overnight because she was so angry that they couldn’t examine her without sedating her. All true and all supported by evidence. One can go talk to the vet, the vet’s assistants, the office people who could hear my cat yowl, examine my cat, see the $650 charge on my credit card, etc”
Ok I think this is a good example to use. First you are referring to something that happened now. You are not referring to a historical event. If we are to say we have any evidence from most of history then we are not going to be able to talk to the people who were involved. Nor are we going to summon as much evidence for a historical event as we are now. So are we to say we have “no evidence” of anything that happened in the history?
Of course not. We use accounts that were written then. Consider the difference between history and prehistory. Prehistory is the time of humans before there were written records (or at least records that we can read) History is at its base reading accounts which will often cover events that no surviving person can verify by live eyewitness testimony. Yet we these written accounts as so valuable to our understanding of the past we separate prehistory from history by existence of these materials. If we were to not consider any of these accounts as evidence then we would know precious little of our history.
Its hard to know much of anything that happened in prehistoric times because written records are so important. That’s not to say we can’t learn anything. One of my favorite blogs is bones don’t lie: https://bonesdontlie.wordpress.com/
I love what she does and how she tries to gather information. But I think she would be the first to admit she would love to have some written records that she could read regarding some of the issues she investigates. In sum yes we can learn allot by archeology but we have a much greater magnitude of information for times when we have written accounts.
Now lets just pretend to fast forward 2000 years. Let’s say the question is whether your cat was really sedated by a vet. I’m trying to convince people it was. At first the only document we have is a copy of the text I quoted above. Let’s just do a bit of historical analysis to see what sort of evidence this might be.
The first part we ask is whether you are even trying to give us facts about what happened. You start out by saying “I can tell a story that I went to the vet today to get my cat.” Ok the whole I can tell a story part makes me wonder if you are just giving me a hypothetical or an actual event. On this part I would of course prefer it if you had said “I have investigated everything and will tell you truthfully that my cat was sedated at the vet.” But then later you say everything you say is ”All true and all supported by evidence.” This would lead me to think you were relaying things you believed were true and not just telling a story. So the way you introduce your topic is somewhat more suspect than some of the books in the new testament where the authors clearly state they want us to believe what they are saying is true. So ok given this context which does not exist for the new testament authors you might have just made the whole thing up. But let’s set that aside and assume you left out the bit about how you “can” tell a story and assume we don’t know the context.
Now you don’t clearly indicate that you yourself saw the doctor sedate the cat. Did you hear the cat yowl or are you just relying on others and they can say they heard it? You did not say “I was there and saw and heard my cat yowling and scratching the staff at which point I saw the doctor pick up a needle and inject my cat and my cat was calm in 4 minutes.” But also everything you say would be somewhat consistent with your being there at this time. Well all except the part about you picking him up today and him being there overnight. Since you were not there overnight it might be the case that you were not there when they decided to sedate the cat. But either way whether you were there or not what you say is consistent with your actually believing the cat was sedated. You were referring to people who if we lived 2000 years ago we could talk to (much like Paul and other new testament writers do) This would give the probability a boost right?
Now you also refer to documents people can look at much like Paul and other early Christians do. But unfortunately lets assume that after 2000 years we don’t have your credit card records any more. They are gone. But lets say we do find a new vet record. And this vet record has your name and you came in with an animal that needed to be sedated. But the area where it talks about what kind of animal is missing. Lets say it also shows that you came in and the animal was over night for 2 nights. When your cat was “overnight” could that be consistent with it being overnight 2 nights? Well people will disagree. Also lets say the charge was $658.93. Does that corroborate your claim or not? Well some people will say it will. But others will take the position that this contradicts your claim. Because you said the charge was $650 not 658.93. I think we can all agree it can’t be both 650 even and 658.93. The question of how precise you were trying to be is the issue. And since you did give the single dollar amount some might claim this record is too inconsistent with what you said so it tends to disprove your credibility and thus we can’t believe anything you say.
Now let’s say the medial record says that animal had to be sedated sure. So it was an animal that someone with your name brought in and it had to be sedated. But the records says the animal “was sedated as we normally do for this sort of procedure.” Hmm, now some people would say that is inconsistent with your version where you are attributing the sedation to your cat yowling and being difficult. This other record mentions none of that. (although it doesn’t specifically deny it either) I think some people will say the record corroborates your story others will focus in on the apparent inconsistencies and say this record is not evidence for the fact that you had your cat sedated. They will argue it is too inconsistent with your cat story.
As you can see there is no easy way to just decide these issues in the abstract. We don’t just say aha this seems inconsistent therefore throw it all out. Even if we determine that an account has an error we still don’t say “well he got one thing wrong so now we can’t consider anything he says as evidence.” We would again end up with almost no evidence of anything in history. There is no short and easy answer. You just need to look at all the factors and make your own mind up. That is the way history works.
You say:
“The bible stories are the claim, they aren’t the evidence. So they do need evidence to support them. In a criminal case, the claim would be “Suspect ‘x’ did activity ‘y’.” In the case of your religion, the claim is that Jesus Christ was some variant of divine being, born, lived, died and was resurrected. So, we have the suspect and the claimed activity. Now, we need the evidence to support the claim.”
No the bible accounts are evidence. If you throw out all the written accounts of things by claiming they are just claims that need evidence we would have very little reason to believe much history at all.
I need to go. But I will address some of your other points later.
Hi Joe,
Thanks for the compliment. I’ve had other Christians call me venomous and unkind when I wrote the same stuff to them.
When I was referring to my cat, I was referring to the past, the recent past, but “history” nonetheless. We do lose evidence as time progresses, but there are instances when we should reasonably find at least some. For instance, the bible claims that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people and animals wandered around the Sinai for 4 decades. There is no evidence of this, not one latrine or one garbage pile which would have built up in the places like Mount Sinai where the Israelites supposedly stayed for months. We don’t even know when this was, to look in the right layers. We also should be able to find external mentions of certain events. Again, to use the exodus example, we have no one noticing that the entire Egyptian army has been destroyed, nor that the Egyptians have lost most, if not all of their food and water supply. This would have caused emigration and attacks by Egypt’s competitors. We have none of this. Same with the flood, there is no evidence at all of a flood as claimed by the bible. I’m a geologist so this is of particular interest to me. For most of these events we have no idea when they were supposed to have happened.
The problem is that you have no evidence for any of the essential events in the bible beyond written accounts. We have plenty of evidence for other historical events but not for these. Written accounts are great but we also have written accounts of other things we know never existed. Atlantis for example. Might there have been something remotely similar to Atlantis? Yep,, but not Atlantis as described in the written accounts. Another difference is that no one says that they were told Atlantis exists by an omnipotent omniscient god.
Written accounts aren’t taken by themselves as
strong evidence by historians. They must be backed up by other independent sources, by artifacts, etc. For instance, if I said Julius Caesar rode an M1 Abrams tank into battle against the gauls in 51 BCE, then I would need to show evidence to support that, very strong evidence if I make such an amazing claim. If I say Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in a chariot of a certain make, I have to provide evidence of that too. Caesar’s journals don’t mention actually crossing the river, but he must have since he had no other route to rome with his legions. We have bits of chariots and we know how they change depending on time period. Crossing a river isn’t a implausible claim nor is a chariot, riding a computerized tank thousands of years before it was invented is. In archaeology and anthropology, we have artifacts which are analyzed and then theories made about them and their significance.
Again, we have nothing of the same for your bible stories. I love to watch those shows that claim that aliens influenced humans, etc. They make all sorts of claims that stories are evidence for aliens visiting us. A story isn’t much evidence. Then they try to claim that artifacts support their claims, that humans could never do “x”. When it’s shown that humans could and indeed did do “x”, they run for the next artifact, saying that “well, now this is the evidence.” And so on. The Hindus have stories of all sorts of wonderful things happening at some indeterminate time and place just like the bible. They have no other evidence and I don’t believe them either. There is a clam that there were spaceships/ufos over Nuremberg in 1561. I doubt that story too. Could it have an explanation? Yep, could have been ergot in the wheat but I’d need evidence for that claim too.
We may have better information in written records and we can also have better imaginative writing in written records. I can point to written records of other gods, does this mean that they have to be true? I don’t think you would make that claim. Writing does not have to be, nor is, only records of factual information.
My cat story isn’t a great replica of something massive that should be remembered and should have evidence. It’s no ten plagues and thousands of people. But we can go with it. You are right, there is a question if I am relating a real event or a fake one. I gave two stories, one about my cat and one about riding a dragon. Which is more likely to be true? Well, if in 2000 years people have pets, that is one mark on the side of plausibility. Now, if I had said “I have investigated everything and will tell you truthfully that I have ridden a dragon and had a lovely adventure on Pern.”, would this make you believe me any more or less? It seems that it actually would make you believe me more and that is a little silly in my opinion. There is no reason to believe me at all, no matter what I promise you, especially if I have an agenda, which could be to make myself feel important because I got external validation by your belief.
The gospel writers, whomever they were, certainly did want people to believe them. That doesn’t mean they were telling the truth at all, nor would I trust anyone who says “believe me, I’m telling the truth, honest”. I would always look for corroborating evidence, especially when the claims are unbelievable.
I could have written everything about both stories with plenty of detail and claimed that I saw and did everything as you mention. This also does not make anything true. I can go into exhaustive detail about my adventure on Pern and it would be entirely made up. You can see that the addition of detail is a technique to get people to believe (conspiracy theories do this often), and again it does not make anything true. It could be that my cat was teleported to another planet when I was not there and cat aliens talked to her and calmed her down. Which is the more plausible story?
I agree that if we could talk to Paul et al, it would be best. Then we’d know what was intended as literal and what as metaphor. However, we only have their writing, writing that a Christian claims as inspired/written by their god. It is held to a higher standard than my cat story. When we find errors in it, and there are many, the base claim of Christianity loses plausibility. Paul et all might have believed what they wrote, but again that does not make it true or plausible. I could also say that people in 2000 would probably still know biology and chemistry and know what cats are and what sedatives are and could figure out, if they didn’t still have the records, of how this would work. No magic needed to be invoked. It’s all still quite mundane.
Your assumptions can hold for a very mundane story of a cat at the vet, but it runs into trouble when you use them on the bible, which is claimed to be quite a different sort of a story. We have this set of books that every believer claims is some “truth” and that they and only they have the “right” interpretation. They claim that they have translated these book with the help of their god. So, ideas that words are ambiguous shouldn’t happen in this book, not unless this god wants to intentionally cause harm. We also have the problem of stories in the bible directly contradicting each other. A problem if found in my cat story, drastic if found in the book that is claimed as a moral guide and accurate description of how to avoid being sent to eternal torture. There is plenty of evidence that supports my cat story, even if it can be interpreted in different ways. For your events, we don’t even have that evidence to debate about.
We also have quite a few instances of the bible being quite precise and those details failing to be shown to be true, for instance the claims about the tabernacle and the temple. If those claims can’t be shown true, then again, a problem for my story, and a major one for a claim of truth from an omniscient and omnipotent being. I can be inconsistent and it’s just me being human. The bible being inconsistent, well, that’s a problem if your god is what is claimed.
I have no problem if you wish to claim that the bible isn’t what it claims to be: “12 In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, 13 while evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. 14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15 and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God[a] may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
If it isn’t what it claims, that wouldn’t surprise me. It would be just one more set of myths that have no evidence to them, except for the stories themselves amounts to “its true because it says its true because it says its true….” I am guessing it is much more to you and was to me when I was a Christian.
No one, at least to my knowledge, is saying that the bible got one thing wrong and that is the only reason why it should be chucked. That is a straw man claim. What is said is that it got a lot of things wrong and again, we have no external evidence for its claims. History is not simply opinion where you make your own mind up; it does not work that way at all. A historian will not say “hey, ancient Hawaiians rode giant purple ducks” or “Moses split the sea with magic and killed the entire Egyptian army” and everyone just nods their head and agrees with them. They need evidence.
I will agree that stories are a kind of evidence. But one cannot use a story as evidence to prove the same story. It is indeed circular reasoning then. If you have a story, then we need other evidence to support it. I can say “Suspect x did activity y”. That could be evidence for another story “Suspect Z did activity y too.” But not for itself. If you say “subject x did y” and someone asks how do you know and you say “subject x did y”, I can pretty much guarantee that most will look at you with confusion.
Without corroborating evidence, we don’t have any reason to believe in most of history at all. That’s okay. And that’s why we need that other evidence.
Later!
Wow I need to catch up on the comment section. Here. I haven’t read everything. But I will say I never read the Old testament as literally true in the way I read the New Testament. I am Catholic and traditionally there have been accepted interpretations of the old testament other than literal. Are you from a fundamentalist background?
But I have to say this is just wrong:
“Written accounts aren’t taken by themselves as
strong evidence by historians. They must be backed up by other independent sources, by artifacts, etc.”
Artifacts will tell you very little. Why did america fight a civil war? Finding old guns and buildings that were shot at won’t answer any of these questions. The written accounts are the primary source of history. That is what distinguishes what we call “history” from “prehistory.”
BTW: I will keep reading through and giving my views as I have time.
Hello Joe,
I am not surprised that you never read the OT as literally true as the NT. Not many Christians do since the OT is full of some very nasty things. Unfortunately for Christians, if one is to believe your bible, Jesus did take the OT as true and literal. I know that Catholics aren’t sola scriptura, but there is no more reason to accept your version than a Protestant’s, neither of you have evidence for your claims. I was a Presbyterian. Every Christian makes up what should be literal and what should be metaphor. You need the resurrection story to be literal, and the NT miracles to be real or your religion is ridiciulous. The claims are the same in the OT and NT, and in the Mormon’s one and in the Qu’ran and in every other set of myths for a religion, stories that have no evidence and no reason to believe them. Do you believe that the hindu gods warred in strange flying machines? If not, why not?
What I said about historians isn’t “just wrong”. It is quite right. Historians do not take stories by themselves as strong evidence. Neither do lawyers or judges, especially when the stories amount to hearsay, “an out-of-court statement introduced to prove the truth of the matter asserted therein.” Take the claims of Atlantis. No historian accepts that Atlantis existed as claimed. We have only the story, nothing else. The same with claims that Vespasian healed people with his spit. No one takes that as true since it is improbable story with no other evidence to support it. Same with Marco Polo. We get some fantastic stories from Polo, but they are not accepted as true until something else supports them. For example, Polo claimed dog featured humans. There aren’t any. He also claimed that his father and uncle were part of a siege against a city in China and built the siege engines for it; there was a siege, but there is no reason to think that the Polos were involved because there is no evidence for it. No historian accepts stories without other supporting evidence as true claims without question. No historian says “hey, Zeus was real because we have stories about him.” What they do say is “People used to believe that Zeus was real and told these stories about him.”
Oh my. “Artifacts will tell you very little. Why did america fight a civil war? Finding old guns and buildings that were shot at won’t answer any of these questions. The written accounts are the primary source of history. That is what distinguishes what we call “history” from “prehistory.”
You are very unfamiliar with artifacts if you claim that artifacts “tell you very little”. That is simply untrue. An artifact can tell you if something happened. It doesn’t have to tell you why, and your attempt to shift the goalposts is noted. That wasn’t surprising at all.
If there the splitting of the sea and the entire Egyptian army was destroyed, where is the evidence? The bottom of the sea should be littered with artifacts and they should be able to dated to a certain time period, but again Christians and Jews can’t agree on when these supposed events happened, and you can’t even decide if they were real or not. If there were hundreds of thousands of people wandering around as a group in an area the size of half of Pennsylvania for 4 decades, there would be physical evidence. If there was a worldwide flood as described in the bible, there would be one huge layer of hydraulically sorted sediment and detritus, at a certain period. Christians can’t say what period, because they can’t agree on when these supposed events happened or where, or produce any evidence at all. If there was a “star” for the nativity, no else noticed it and we know that other civilizations did pay attention to the sky. If there were the dead patriarchs wandering around in Palestine, no one noticed. If there was major earthquake, the sky darkening, and these dead people walking around all on the same day, no one else noticed it at all. The earthquake would leave evidence, the sun darkening would have been remarkable and terrifying. We would have external reports, and we don’t. (I am very familiar with all of the claims of supposed evidence for these events and if you wish to discuss them, I can in detail.)
No historian takes one written account and takes that as fact. It must have other external support. If there are more than one written account, then they are compared to see how much they agree, the context of them, cultural, psychological, anthropological, etc. If they disagree on major points, they are doubted as being the truth, and evidence is needed to determine which is true, if any. If they are of a nature to leave evidence, e.g. battles, natural disasters, etc, then that evidence is looked for, artifacts, physical indications, etc. That’s why we have had a thousand years of Christians looking for such things, from Empress Theodora onward, all trying to support their myths with evidence. That’s why we have people still looking for evidence on how the Battle of Little Big Horn actually occurred, for how the 1923 Tokyo earthquake played out, for how the Battle of Gettysburg happened, why Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, etc.
Supposedly, per your bible, JC did so many miracles, after he was dead and resurrected, that there wasn’t going to be enough books in the world to hold them written down. Funny how that nothing supports this at all. It’s a story, just like all of the rest. And I’m still waiting for any baptized believing Christian to do the miracles promised in the bible.
Vel said this:
Ok its important to note that saying Julius Caesar rode an M1 Abrams tank into battle in 51 bce contradicts allot of history. In order to believe that we would need to stop believing allot of history that we know about when certain technologies came about etc. We know these things from history. So saying that these technologies existed and were used by Julius Caesar in 51 bc is not just a claim, but one that contradicts allot of other historical evidence.
Miracle accounts don’t do that. They contradict certain peoples philosophical worldviews. Some people refuse to believe the laws of nature can ever be violated. Science tells us how the natural laws work. But they do not answer whether such laws can ever be violated. The refusal to believe in a miracle can happen is not a historical or a scientific claim. It’s a philosophical one.
I think its important to sort this out. It is important to not mix up our history with our religion philosophy and science. We should understand the methods of each.
So if I read the Quran a historical analysis might lead me to conclude that Muhammad did split the moon. But I might not believe that is true due to religious beliefs that I hold concerning whether God would have worked through him, and philosophical views about what sort of person could perform a miracle. But its quite possible that a strictly historical analysis of the text could be evidence that a miracle occurred. I would have to weigh that evidence against my competing philosophical and religious views and the evidence that supports them. We have a situation where there is “competing evidence” not “no evidence.”
Now if there were historical documents that said “Jesus’s followers claimed they saw an empty tomb but I was there and Jesus body was there.” Then we would have a contradiction in historical documents. We would have historical evidence against the claim that Jesus rose from the dead. We would need to weigh that evidence against the evidence we have from the new testament.
Of course you might have philosophical reasons to believe that a miracle can never occur. And that is ok I do not mean to challenge that here or now. This may lead you to say the writers of the bible are not reliable. Thats ok. But again that is stemming from your philosophical belief not your historical analysis.
Does archaeology and anthropology tell us a lot or a little about what happened? Well its like arguing whether a mile is a long way or a short way. But it seems to me that we have a much better sense of what happened in the world when we have written accounts of what happened.
Yep, Caesar riding an M1A1 Abrams does indeed contradict a lot of history. And we would certainly have to stop believing in the history of the M1A1, warfare, the US Marines (my brother was a tank commander of one of these and I got to sit in one), etc. You know how we know the history of the tank, et al? Why yes, written records plus artifacts e.g. historical evidence!
Now, we have your claim that your religion is true, which contradicts a lot of history. We have the bible as the claim that Jesus Christ existed, that your god exists and that certain events happened. That’s all we have, a set of stories that disagree on details themselves and which have no other evidence to support them. We have no agreed upon dates for the events. We have claims of miracles (listed by me before) that should have been noticed by huge numbers of people, including non-believers, and that in at least some cases, should have left physical evidence. These stories contradict huge amounts of historical evidence, and thus should be doubted.
For instance, there is nothing that supports a huge disruption of the Egyptian empire, no matter the date that a Christian or Jew might wish to fantasize about. No miraculous plagues, splitting of the sea, etc at all. And one would think that those would leave We do have evidence of the transfer of power, coups, inheritance of power by descendants, etc. We have no evidence of a world-wide flood at any particular time, and we have evidence that civilizations went about their normal business during any time fantasized about by Christians and Jews for this event.
So your claims that miracle accounts shouldn’t be expected to leave evidence or only contradict “certain peoples’ worldview” is false. It’s hilarious that you are using the last Tuesday excuse for your god now. With your claim, we may as well say that the entire universe didn’t exist before last Tuesday and we only believe we have lived for years (48 in my case), experiencing things. Again, many of the miracles in your bible would have left evidence or would have been experienced by non-beleivers. Neither occurred.
There is no reason to think that natural laws can be violated as your bible claims and as Christians, and other theists, now claim. It seems that you are doing what the story about the dragon in the garage says you will do, you have to make up excuse after excuse why no one notices a dragon in your garage.
Again, you have claimed that miracles occurred, miracles that would have left evidence or been experienced by many others, including non-believers. That is not just a philosophical claim, that is a claim that something is materially true. Now, you must support that idea. I can materially support that it is not just a philosophical claim that miracles don’t happen. I can show that they don’t.
I haven’t mixed up anything at all. It is you who are try to so desperately to move the goal posts. Again, history depends on evidence, stories, and artifacts.
If one reads the Qu’ran, looking at the evidence e.g. the story and the other evidence (which historians use) would not lead you to conclude that Muhammed split the moon. You may not believe it because your religion requires you to not believe in stories from other religions that their gods exist; but there is plenty of other evidence to consider. The other evidence you would look at is: did anyone else on the earth see the moon split during the appropriate time frame, is there any seam on the moon, did the astronauts notice anything when they were there, did any of the many probes we’ve sent to the moon to map it careful notice anything. The answer to these is all no, so there no reason to think that this is a historical event. This is how a historian works, not your fantasy of one. There is no competing evidence at all, in this situation, the story is the claim, not the evidence. And there is no other evidence to support such nonsense. Your philosophy is no more compelling than the philosophy of someone who disagrees with you, no evidence, just thought problems.
You are correct, if there were historical documents that contained a contradictory story about the tomb and what was in it, we would have evidence of a contradiction. Then we must find evidence to see what actually did happen. We have evidence that none of the claimed events surrounding JC’s supposed death happened and that other precluding events did. Since this is the case, there is no reason to believe your new testament and its claims. There is no evidence that the authors of the NT are reliable, and again, we have much evidence to support this claim. That is not from philosophical belief, that is from hard evidence that their claims never happened. I do love to watch you haul those goalposts around.
Archaeology and anthropology do tell us what happened, to the degrees we have evidence supporting claims of events. I have no idea what you mean by your attempt at a mile analogy. It doesn’t matter what something “seems” to you. The fact is that we need evidence to support claims of events. We can start with written stories, or spoken stories for that matter, and then look for evidence to support them. When we find no evidence to support them at all, when we could reasonably assume that there should be evidence left, then there is no reason to believe the stories.
Writing something down doesn’t mean it is true. It could mean that someone thinks its true, and if you want to take that as evidence that your god exists and that the events of the bible are true, then this must apply to every religion whose followers wrote things down. Every religion becomes as “true” as yours, TR, as does every claim of alien abduction, every conspiracy theory, etc.
Its true that hearsay evidence is not ordinarily admissible in court. And you did quote the legal definition of hearsay.
But you should note a few things. All historical evidence after about 100 years is hearsay. All of it. It doesn’t matter if the person who wrote it saw first hand what happened and just reported what they saw happen. It’s still hearsay according to the legal definition. So all historical accounts are hearsay evidence according to the law.
Also notice that although they are not admitted its not that they are not “evidence.” The law has always agreed that hearsay accounts can be relevant evidence. There are various reasons that hearsay evidence is not allowed in court and it often has to do with the right of people to cross examine their accusers. It also has to with a jury being able to actually see the person testifying and judge their credibility. Is the lawyer feeding all the information to the witness and the witness is just nodding along? Or does the witness seem to be giving their own testimony based on their memory. Moreover as you may know allot of the connotation is lost when you write things.
Historians do take hearsay accounts to be reliable information. Pick up any history book chances are the author did not himself see what happened. So that book is what we call “double hearsay.” It is the historian writing what he read from another document. Even if that other document was a first hand account the history book would still be double hearsay. You would have a guy saying what another out of court statement said.
So if you are not going to accept hearsay evidence you will not believe much of anything about what happened before 1914 or so.
Again, TR, historians do not take stories by themselves as strong evidence. They do not take stories that are indeed hearsay as strong evidence that something truly happened. I’d like you to join me in picking out a historian that we would agree on as a good historian and we can ask them if they just took stories as evidence that something happened without using anything else. Will you do that?
I do not agree that all historical evidence beyond a 100 years is hearsay. Are you familiar with the concept of sources: primary, secondary, tertiary and so on? If so, then you know that primary sources aren’t hearsay, “legal term for testimony in a court proceeding where the witness does not have direct knowledge of the fact asserted, but knows it only from being told by someone.” E.g. “an out-of-court statement introduced to prove the truth of the matter asserted therein.” If someone, the author/witness says “I did this.” That is not hearsay. There is direct knowledge of the fact asserted. If I say “X said they did this.” Then it is hearsay, because I, the witness, does not have direct knowledge of the fact asserted. That would be a secondary source, and as the referrers increase in number we get farther from the original source, with tertiary, etc.
You say that historians do take hearsay accounts to be reliable information. Okay, give me an example, because I have no knowledge of one and you have made the positive claims. I know of no historians who take stories as reliable evidence with nothing else to support them, and I believe that is what you are arguing. Please correct me if I am incorrect. Yep, historians probably didn’t see what happened. They take the stories that people tell, and then they compare those to evidence. The story itself isn’t evidence, but similar stories from external sources are, as are artifacts. Again, we have your religion that doesn’t have this to support its stories. We don’t have primary sources. The history book citing original sources would certainly be hearsay, but the sources would not.
Again, I do not accept hearsay evidence by itself and no I would not believe much of anything about what happened before 1914 or so without additional supporting evidence. I don’t even accept hearsay from 1940s or so that the Nazis were working on a spaceship. 🙂
I responded to part of this below. I will respond to the other parts later.
People then usually would give their source. In history that source is usually a written account. Maybe that written account will claim to be a eyewitness. But we might not have anything but their story to know if that is the case. Sometimes we have multiple accounts like we do in the new testament. But that is pretty rare for that time period.
Yes, people would usually give their source, but you have argued that the story is evidence for itself. Thus, the source is not needed if your claim is true. Is it?
It is not an established fact that the NT stories are multiple independent accounts. We have no originals, no way to know which version is true and it is thought by many NT scholars, including Christians, that the gospels are influenced by each other or a common source.
Again, there are plenty of instances in the bible where there should be external stories about the same events and in some cases there is a reasonable expectation of artifacts. You have none of these to support what are still baseless stories.
The accounts are the sources.
You keep saying there are no artifacts that support what is said in the Gospels but that is not true. We do have some.
Here is a site that provides some I am not really all that interested in this topic but surely you will admit some it corroborates the new testament accounts.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/septemberweb-only/9-22-21.0.html?start=1
It’s behind a pay wall. however, it appears to be the usual claims. The “shroud” is not evidence. There is nothing to say that it is what it claims and there is evidence to indicate it was made much later by humans.
I’m going to guess it talks about some of the following:
cruxifiction victim: yep, people were cruxified. Supposedly Spartacus was, along with a lot of othrs. This is like saying that since New York City exists, then spiderman has to exist.
A first century fishing boat: why yes, people had boats and fished. Again, no evidence of your religon’s claims.
And on and on. Again, no more evidence that your bible’s stories are true than knowing that there is Russian submarines makes the events in the Hunt for Red October true.
so, no, I will not admit that it corroborates the new testament accounts.
for someone who claims not to be “really that interested” you make a lot of claims about it.
here’s site that has the usual claims: http://www.bethinking.org/is-the-bible-reliable/archaeology-and-the-historical-reliability-of-the-new-testament
in addition to the ones I noted, most of the others are claims that the existence of Christians and churches somehow prove that your bible myths are true. If that were the case, then all religions are true if they have believers and buildings/artifacts. Do you wish to agree?
No one thinks all the books of the new testament come from the same exact source. At least as far as i know. Yes they may have shared information. I am pretty sure they did. But that doesn’t mean there is only one source for what they say.
and I didn’t say that, TR. I said that scholars think that the gospels are either influenced by each other or a source influenced and least some of them them. Nice strawman.
I am not sure what I am not to believe here. Of course you know the author of Timothy (Paul?) could not have meant what we know as the the bible right? If Timothy was a grown man and knew Scriptures since infancy he likely not referring to the new testament which had not been written let alone gathered together and called the bible. He likely meant the Septuagint and perhaps a few writings from the new testament. For example he (assuming its the same author) seems to later refer to Luke as being scripture. 1 timothy 5:17-18
But because all scripture is “theopneusto” I do not think that means it must be without error. I have no issue with it all being useful for teaching rebuking correcting and training in righteousness.
But anyway lets assume that theopneuso was supposed to mean completely free from error. (I don’t think the word is used in any other texts than this one so its hard to know what Paul meant by it)
Anyway look at this logically.
Joe: I am not so sure the bible is completely free from error.
Vel: But the bible says its completely free from error.
You see my point?
Why yes, I do know that the human Timothy couldn’t have been talking about the bible aka “scripture” as Christians do now. The bible is an entirely human confabulated collection of books that was put together by Christians who didn’t like other Christians. It’s entirely nonsense.
But… :)
That isn’t what all, or even most, Christians claim. They use the verse in Timothy to claim that the entire bible is inspired by their god. Are they wrong? To play god’s advocate here, couldn’t Timothy have been inspired to say such a thing because your god knew, being all omniscient and such, that the bible would come together as it is? Why should I believe you, true Christian, as opposed to those true Christians? And it does seem that you do believe that all scripture *is* “theopneusto”, “But because all scripture is “theopneusto…” do you?
Let me ask you: can a perfect being make an imperfect thing? If your perfect god inspired this, why does it have errors per your claims? That would indicate that this perfect thing isn’t so perfect at all if it can’t act against human agency. And if something is intended to teach on how to avoid hell and worship this god, all of it, how can one tell what parts are in “error” and what isn’t?
My point is that Christians pick and choose what parts they want to pretend are entirely free of error. They decide that there has to be errors since the stories of the bible are often ridiculous or simply disgusting to any humane empathic human being. Those parts, a woman created from a rib, two contradictory creation stories, a flood that has no evidence, a “exodus” that has no evidence, genocide, killing a man for trying to keep a magic box upright, saying that slavery is fine and how to do it “right”, telling slaves to never seek their freedom, murdering everyone who doesn’t share a religious belief and then allowing one’s archenemy to be free again to corrupt the supposedly good people that weren’t murdered before, are relegated to “error” or metaphor just because you don’t like them.
In my opinion, the discussion has gone:
Joe: I am not so sure that the bible is completely free from error, but I claim that certain pieces are true.
Vel: The bible says its completely free from error. I don’t believe that but Christians do, at least in parts. Christians can’t agree on what the errors are or which parts are the ones to take literally. None of you have any evidence that any of you are right in your claims of truth. So, why should anyone believe you?
Ok I was just talking with a former fundamentalist about some such passages.
We had very different interpretations of these passages.
Ok you got the definition and the example mixed up. The definition of hearsay is “an out-of-court statement introduced to prove the truth of the matter asserted therein.” That is how hearsay is defined legally at least in the US. That is a correct definition of legal hearsay.
You other quote would be an example of it. i.e., “In a court proceeding where the witness does not have direct knowledge of the fact asserted, but knows it only from being told by someone.” That is one example of hearsay. This is important to understand that legally hearsay is much broader.
Would your primary sources be hearsay? Yes, unless you can get the person physically to appear and testify what he saw and heard. After about 100 years that is very hard to do.
Primary sources are hearsay. When the source was created out of court it is an “out of court statement.” Most primary sources historians use were created out of court and therefore they are hearsay. Again if you want to learn much history you will need to use hearsay.
Do historians prefer primary sources? Usually but it may be that there is good reason to prefer secondary sources over primary sources.
But think about this. Pick up any random history book – any of them. Do you think that author was there to personally witness what he is recording? Not likely. Maybe your history book has some pictures. But even there you need to rely on that persons claims of what the pictures show and where they were found. I.e., you have to listen to believe the “stories” your are being told about the pictures. Did you travel directly to the places yourself and see the items with your own eyes? No you believe the “stories.”
Might historians have sources that claim to be primary? Yes sometimes – but before the printing press it’s unlikely that most of the sources they use are primary.
And yes even if it is a primary source the document would still be hearsay because it was made out of court. As you should be able to see the legal rule of hearsay is not considered a bar to evidence when it comes to history. If it was we would not accept any evidence concerning what happened unless we literally had the people who witnessed it right in front of us telling us what happened. That is not how history works.
I’d like to clarify something: do you think historians use the exact same definitions as lawyers do?
Sometimes. Sometimes not. Both will have terms that have particular meanings for their areas.
Okay. I’ll be back in a bit (day or two maybe) to discuss things further.
I look forward to hearing from you. I enjoy reading your comments and views. You gave allot of information in your comments. And I probably did not talk about all of it. If there is anything in particular I missed and you wonder my views on let me know.
Hey T&R, I think this mantra stems from two different sources. First, there are smart atheists who start out with more sophisticated “There is no sufficient evidence” that evolve to “There is no evidence” as they become more arrogant and anti-theistic. Then, there are the band wagon atheists who just parrot “There is no evidence” without any sort of thought about the nature of evidence.
That’s just from my experience anyway. BTW it’s good that you have a demanding job and are able to blog a little as well!
I think what you say probably happens. I also think it comes from a misunderstanding as to what “relevant evidence” is.
I think reasonable people can disagree on whether there is *sufficient* evidence. However, if someone says there is no evidence then I think we are getting a different idea of what evidence is. And often they have a view something along the lines of if the “evidence” is not “proof” then its no evidence at all. But here again in every case I have ever tried there is some evidence for both sides. And indeed the accounts do provide some historical evidence for miracles.
Now when someone says there is not “sufficient” evidence. That is I think much more reasonable. But then the question is sufficient for whom? Again its important to understand that reasonable people can disagree on how much evidence is needed. I really think people should understand that we are dealing with a balance. I think that will help both sides to this debate maintain respect for the other side’s views and encourage a more civil conversation.
BTW I do not think Vel is unreasonable. I suspect he is operating with a different definition of what is relevant evidence than the one I quoted from the U.S. Federal Rules of Evidence. I think many reasonable people only have a loose idea of what they call “relevant evidence” and that is really the purpose of this blog. To clarify what “relevant evidence” is. If we can’t agree on a definition at least we will know we mean different things when we say there is (or is not) “relevant evidence.”
As far as time yes time is tight. But I can usually do my job at and be a good family guy and still pretty much support one hobby. From time to time that hobby will be blogging. Sometimes it’s something else or nothing at all. Hence there will be time gaps in my blogs and comments.
I agree with your assessment.
It’s wonderful that you are getting ideas from this paragraph as well as from our discussion made here.
All historians treat accounts as evidence. Saying something is “strong” evidence is a relative term and will by historians and by the account. Here are some factors that Bart Ehrman suggests we use in evaluating accounts:
1) Multiple sources
2) Preferably Independent sources
3) Non biased sources
4) Contextual credibility
5) Close in time to the events
6) No contradictions/internally consistent
Now Bart Ehrman doesn’t think miracles are historical but he does so for philosophical reasons.
I did a blog on it here:
It is definitely not because he thinks accounts provide no evidence. Now if an account fails enough of these criteria then yes a historian will not consider them evidence. But generally accounts are the main evidence that historians are dealing with.
Ehrman is not alone. These are some history books I have listened to recently and all of them as far as I remember will refer to an account as evidence at one point or another:
I could keep going. Not all of these are professional historians necessarily. (most are though) Like for example Shrier on the Third Reich, was a journalist. But I think his book has been considered history. Anyway I am not aware of a single historian who would claim that a single account is per se not evidence unless it has some physical evidence to support it.
Your circular reasoning is astounding!
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Joe, where is the evidence the stories about miracles are true?
The several authors near that time mention them happening. See the comments above.
Again, Joe, the writers are mentioning stories that Christians told. You have evidence that the stories were likely believed but no evidence that the events happened. however, if you want to put up some quotes from these “several authors” we can discuss them.
Again Vel that is what history is. Taking what people believed happened before you and seeing that as evidence of what actually happened. Lots of our beliefs are true.
History is indeed when people document what other people believed. This is not evidence for those beliefs. The evidence we do have indicates that the bible is entirely wrong in its essential claims of what happened with its god and supposed messiah.
That is the same for the stories that we know that ancient Egyptians believed in, ancient Greeks, Romans, ancient Chinese, Ancient Maya, etc religions that people believed in but no evidence that those stories are true.
Vel:
History is indeed when people document what other people believed. This is not evidence for those beliefs.
Joe:
You can feel free we have no evidence for any history if you want. But I hope you at least recognize that is an unusual view.
Vel:
The evidence we do have indicates that the bible is entirely wrong in its essential claims of what happened with its god and supposed messiah.
Joe:
You refuse to even acknowledge historical evidence so I am not sure what you consider evidence. To even evaluate that claim.
Vel:
That is the same for the stories that we know that ancient Egyptians believed in, ancient Greeks, Romans, ancient Chinese, Ancient Maya, etc religions that people believed in but no evidence that those stories are true.
Joe:
The Historical evidence of the gospels is better than the evidence of these other religions. I am going to do a blog about why Christianity has stronger evidence than Islam. If you want to take a religion and make the case that the historical evidence better supports their miracle claims or other evidence for their religion I will respond. But you just keep asserting the evidence for all these other religions is just as strong when it is obvious it is not to anyone who knows about the evidence of Christianity compared to these other religions. Go ahead and make your case I will respond. Take a look at the factors historians use. I gave them in my blog on “many gods.”
Joe, I never said we have no evidence for any history. It’s a shame you decided to claim that falsely. We do have evidence that people believed in certain things. We do not have evidence that those certain things are true.
Again, you try to claim that the historical belief in something means that something is true. We know that is not the case since you don’t believe that Osiris exists simply because people did indeed believe in that god. We have no evidence e.g. “the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid.” that any of the essential events in the bible happened. For instance, there are no artifacts shown that the “exodus” happened, not one latrine, not one garbage pit, have been found in the area claimed that over 600,000 men plus women, children and animals wandered around on for four decades despite many people looking. There is no evidence for a massive flood that covered the earth entirely (I’m a geologist and flood leave distinctive evidence). No one noticed that on two occasions a legion’s worth of men (plus women and children) were gathered outside of Roman-occupied Jerusalem. There is no evidence of a massive earthquake, the sky darkening, and the dead wandering around Jerusalem on one certain day approximately 2019 years ago.
The gospels have no more historical evidence than the stories of the other religions. You may do a blog about but it won’t be true. For example, we have the stories of Ancient Egypt, we have reams of papyrus, the writings on the buildings, etc that the gods existed and the stories about them. We have the Book of the Dead which goes into exhaustive detail on how to navigate the afterlife of this religion. We also have writings that other civilizations knew about the religion of Egypt. Now, what do we have for the Gospels? We have writings on what these people believed from other cultures. We have the stories themselves. And that’s it. Both religions had believers, and both religions have no evidence that their gods exist or that the events claimed to have happened every happened at all.
Vel:
“Joe, I never said we have no evidence for any history. It’s a shame you decided to claim that falsely. We do have evidence that people believed in certain things. We do not have evidence that those certain things are true.”
When people write history they are writing what they believe is true. So if you were in 7th grade and read a history book you are reading what a person believes is true. When it said America had a constitutional convention did you have any physical evidence that proved that? Or did you just read the authors book – which contained his or her belief and then say ok I believe we had a constitutional convention.
Thats the way history works. Sometimes we have multiple sources sometimes not. Sometimes our sources seem more reliable than others. Sometimes we have some other context or information to corroborate sometimes not. We actually went through this before on the no evidence thread.
Vel:
“Again, you try to claim that the historical belief in something means that something is true. ”
No again you misrepresent my views.
You are then talking about events that could reasonably be understood in a metaphorical sense.
“The gospels have no more historical evidence than the stories of the other religions.”
According to criteria used by historians they do.
Vel:
“For example, we have the stories of Ancient Egypt, we have reams of papyrus, the writings on the buildings, etc that the gods existed and the stories about them. We have the Book of the Dead which goes into exhaustive detail on how to navigate the afterlife of this religion. We also have writings that other civilizations knew about the religion of Egypt. Now, what do we have for the Gospels? We have writings on what these people believed from other cultures. We have the stories themselves. And that’s it. Both religions had believers, and both religions have no evidence that their gods exist or that the events claimed to have happened every happened at all.”
Joe:
Try to apply historical criteria to these stories.
It’s interesting that you seem to refuse to acknowledge your false statement about me. Oh well.
No, when people write about history, and they are historians, they do not write about what they believe is true, they support that belief with evidence of those events and people. They don’t simply say “Hey, I believe that aliens visited ancient Egypt and built the pyramids.” We don’t call those people historians, we call them conspiracy theorists and generally liars since they cannot support their claims with evidence. Erich Von Daniken is not an historian but he certainly writes what he believes.
I know that there was a Constitutional Convention because we have a constitution, Joe. Did you forget about that? it was written about in contemporary documents, etc. We have corroborating evidence that the attendees existed and that it was very probable that such men would have one what they did. I believe we have a constitutional convention because of evidence not because I want to believe it. For someone who tries to scold me to use criteria historians use, you show you haven’t done this in the least.
And hmm, did you just read book and believe what the authors said? Seems you did and/or believed people you had reason to trust, like your parents etc. Evolutionary theory indicates that it is helpful to believe parents because they can impart information, but in this case, with no evidence, the claims of religions usurp that earned trust. You might believe people without thinking about it, but historians and I don’t. For example, this is why most historians don’t believe in a literal exodus as presented in the bible because there is no evidence for it. However, many Christians and Jews do believe in such an event because they must to cling to their religion.
If we don’t have multiple sources, then the claims in those sources are considered suspect, especially if magic is involved. Yes we did go through this before and you are still wrong, making up nonsense to try to have your bible’s claims be accepted as true.
You have tried to claim that the historical belief in something means that that thing is true. I’m not misrepresenting you at all, but I suspect you don’t like me pointing out that your argument is flawed. You also again try to claim that some events in the bible are “reasonably understood as metaphor” when we have no evidence that the authors meant it that way. You want people who literally believed in sea monsters to suddenly think like a modern human, so the sillier parts of your bible can be waved away because they sound silly to a modern human as yourself. The cruxifiction and resurrection can also be reasonably understood as a metaphor, but that would gut your religion.
So, Joe, you’ve been claiming these “criteria” that historians use. What are they to you? Explain where a historian accept a single source claim of magic as the truth. Here, we see what Wikipedia has as the “historical method” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_method and you have not used it and other Christian apologists haven’t used it either. You can also read what someone like Bart Ehrman thinks about the subject: https://ehrmanblog.org/jesus-and-the-historical-criteria-for-members/
You wanted me to put historical criteria to these stories about ancient Egypt. Hmmm, so we have reams of papyrus, and writings on buildings from hundreds of years, showing change in religion and leadership. We have no claims about ten plagues nor the death of the entire egytian army and the first born and all of the animals in Egypt (no eyewitnesses). We do have reports about regular life, shipping manifests, artisans leaving their names on their work, archaeology showing who actually built the pyramids, etc. We have no actions from any of egypt’s enemies to take advantage of this (no contemporary confirming documents). We do have writings about other disasters in Egypt over the many pharaohs, so we know that they’ll report about their own problems and not just present a perfect view of the kingdom. That we know that people lived their regular lives in Egypt is supported. What is not supported is that their gods existed.
Now, you’ve repeatedly said that you think that the NT is better than the OT for being true, despite the fact that your supposed messiah supposedly believed in the literal events in the bible as presented. However, we can also use the historical method to look at the NT. We have evidence that the Romans occupied Jerusalem, and that’s likely since they occupied quite a few places. But they never did a census as described in the bible because it would be ridiculous to make the entire country uproot and go back to where they were born. The Romans were very efficient so there’s no reasonable likelihood that they would have every done this. We also have had a lot of people sure that they were the promised messiah from the OT prophecies. So, we could have indeed had a Jewish man who was deluded in some manner.
But then we get to the miracles claimed. Those we only have in the bible and as reports of what people believed in as Christians. We don’t have a Roman source that says “I saw this Jewish guy heal someone who was dead.” written contemporarily. We also don’t have the Romans noticing that a Roman Legion’s worth of men (plus others) is gathered for three days (at least) at the Sea of Galilee at one point, and again at another point, with thousands of men, plus others, following Jesus around. No one noticed in an occupied country, and we also have the problem that there are no dates for these events that Christians agree or that make any sense.
This holds trebly true for the claims about the cruxifiction and the events around it. For being the supposed most important event in Christianity, we have contradictory stories, especially between the Gospel of John and the others. There should be evidence of the powerful earthquake claimed, the darkening of the sky, and the dead walking around Jerusalem, but we have nothing. Then we have the gospels claiming in one instance that the apostles were terrified for their lives and hiding, and in John, they go back to the temple to celebrate. WE also don’t have anything remotely like the original autographs of the gospels, if anything like that existed in the first place and we have instances in the gospels where there could have been no eyewitnesses. So, no eyewitnesses, no contemporary documents, no opposing documents, etc. and we do have that things went along in Jerusalem as usual. Christians find themselves caught between the need to make Jesus important and thus well-known and the need to pretend no one noticed him to try to explain why no one noticed him.
you may of course present any evidence you think supports the claims that your religion is based on. I’d be happy to look at those with you. Many Christians make the same claims as other religions, and I would guess that you do not believe those claims when made by any other religion than your own. This why the claim of “look at the universe, it’s evidence” fails for Christians, since they cannot show that it is *their* god as the creator. Christians also have a lot of problems with the way they do no agree on what should be considered literal and what should be considered metaphor in their bible, some think these events literally happened, and thus would have evidence, and some are sure that some of the events are just metaphors, which would indicate no evidence that the event happened. When one Christian contradicts another, there is no reason to believe either without evidence.
Well I will do a post on a couple of reasons I think the evidence for Christianity is better. If you want to argue the evidence for both is identical, I will read what you have to say. But your constant assertion that all religions have equal evidence supporting them is getting as old as it preposterous.
And your claims that the evidence for Christianity are better need some support. I would like to see you show that the evidence for Christianity is better than that for Judaism. I think you may be confusing the quantity of what you claim is evidence as being “better” than the type of evidence you claim to have.
Judaism is an interesting one. Because of course Jesus is proof that the God of Judaism is true. But of course the miracles Jesus performed also are proof of Christianity. I think the miracles performed by Jesus are better supported historically than the miracles of the old testament.
What you think isn’t true. But please proceed in trying to show this. And it’s interesting that you want to claim that the god of Judaism is true when Jews know that Jesus doesn’t fulfill the prophecies that this god supposedly gave.
Vel:
“you may of course present any evidence you think supports the claims that your religion is based on. I’d be happy to look at those with you. Many Christians make the same claims as other religions, and I would guess that you do not believe those claims when made by any other religion than your own. This why the claim of “look at the universe, it’s evidence” fails for Christians, since they cannot show that it is *their* god as the creator.”
You misunderstand what those arguments are intended to show. Those sorts of arguments are not intended to prove it is the christian God as opposed to some other creator.
Vel:
“Christians also have a lot of problems with the way they do no agree on what should be considered literal and what should be considered metaphor in their bible, some think these events literally happened, and thus would have evidence, and some are sure that some of the events are just metaphors, which would indicate no evidence that the event happened. When one Christian contradicts another, there is no reason to believe either without evidence.”
Joe:
The fact that Christians disagree about Christianity does not mean it is all false. Just like the fact that people disagree about subatomic particles proves there is no matter at all.
No, it is not. You are unfortunately making an assumption that historians do not make, that claims that people make are evidence of what actually happened without any corroborating evidence. For example, modern historians do not blindly accept what Herodotus claimed to be true since there is no corroborating evidence. There has been quite a lof of evidence that has ended up showing that Herodotus was pretty accurate. But Herodotus also made this claim about his histories “Many things prove to me that the gods take part in the affairs of man”. Now would you accept Herodotus’ word that the Greek pantheon exists?
You also use a fallacy, Joe. Just because some of our beliefs are true does not mean that they are all true. Just because our belief that the moon is made of rock is true doesn’t mean that there is a silver teapot orbiting Jupiter if someone claims to believe that.
Vel:
“No, it is not. You are unfortunately making an assumption that historians do not make, that claims that people make are evidence of what actually happened without any corroborating evidence. ”
Joe:
No the claims are evidence. You are the one confusing evidence with “convincing evidence” Sometimes the word of a person is enough sometimes it is not. It depends on many factors. It is not the case that we always ask for more evidence or physical evidence. My wife just called and said she is at home. Accordingly I believe she is at home. I do not need more corroborating evidence to reasonably form that belief.
Vel:
“But Herodotus also made this claim about his histories “Many things prove to me that the gods take part in the affairs of man”. Now would you accept Herodotus’ word that the Greek pantheon exists?”
Joe
No but that is not because his word is not evidence. But there is other evidence that cuts against it. In particular the evidence I have of the Christian God. And if the Christian God exists then the other Gods do not. So there are religious reasons not to believe his statement. Atheists would have philosophical reasons not to accept his statement. That is whatever reasons they hold atheism.
Vel:
“You also use a fallacy, Joe. Just because some of our beliefs are true does not mean that they are all true. ”
Joe:
I think you are misrepresenting what I said.
If you are indeed a lawyer, I would not be happy to have you, Joe. A judge would laugh you out of court with the nonsense “the claims are evidence”. “Your honor, I claim that the defendant is innocent, that claim is my evidence.” “Um, counselor, is that all you have?” “Yes, sir, my client is innocent because I have claimed it so.”
Christians need to claim that the claim is the evidence since they have no evidence, only their bible that they cannot agree on what parts are true and what parts are metaphor or simply not true at all. There is no difference between evidence and “convincing evidence”, it either is evidence or it is not. For instance, in the Dover case about creationism, they had expert testimony, from people who can present evidence that they are indeed experts. No one is taken simply at their word. You attempt to try to mix common everyday interactions with people that you have reason trust and that aren’t important to anyone else but you with the claims that a god exists and that this god is to be worshipped upon threat of eternal torture. In that you have no evidence for this god, I have no reason to trust you like you would trust your wife. I can reasonably trust that you have a wife, that you have a home and that she would be in it. I have no reason to trust a claim of a magical god, its magical actions, and that you of all people have the one right way to worship it, out of the billions of theists who make the same claim. This is the same with why I have no problem in reasonably believing in Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars, there were Romans, there were Gauls there were wars, and there is evidence of forts, etc.
In other words, extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence.
Now, you want to claim that Herodotus’s words aren’t evidence. So, how does this work with your claims that the authors’ words in the bible are? In the bible itself, it says that this god isn’t the only one, so are you discounting that too since it’s inconvenient? Only later does this god become the only one per the stories. As for evidence for this god, again, you have claims it exists that you claim are evidence, and that’s it. Archaeology doesn’t support the claims of the bible, contemporary documents don’t support claims, geology doesn’t support the claims, anthropology doesn’t support the claims.
Atheists, including me, have more than “philosophical reasons” to not accept this statement, again, we see no evidence, only stories. This is the same reason I don’t believer your claims as you don’t believe Herodotus’s.
Joe, you said this: “The fact that Christians disagree about Christianity does not mean it is all false. Just like the fact that people disagree about subatomic particles proves there is no matter at all.” There is no evidence for *any* of the versions of Christianity. So your attempt to compare it to physicists fails. We know that matter exists, unless you want to retreat to solipsism, and we only disagree on how it might have arisen and from what. We have Christians who disagree about the most basic things about their religion, what to take as literal and what to take as metaphor or wrong. Since we have Christian claims that contradict other Christian claims, we need evidence to look at. Since we don’t have any from any of the many versions of Christianity, we have completing claims, not completing evidence. For example, in a court, we would have two claims “The suspect is innocent” and “The suspect is guilty”, e.g. “a certain god exists” and “a certain god doesn’t exist”. Now we need evidence to support these claims.
Vel
You are confusing many things. The various books of the bible do not just contain the statement “God exists” Rather they report facts that suggest God exists – such as miracles. Jesus healed a blind man. Or Jesus rose from the dead.
Just like a witness does not take the stand and say “the defendant is innocent.” Rather the witness would report facts. They would say I was with the defendant on the night of the murder at this place and time. And then it would be up to the jury to decide if the defendant committed the murder.
And yes in trials witnesses often contradict each other or even their own prior testimony. The judge will still allow the jury to sort out how much weight they want to put on it.
You are not lawyer and even for lawyers the rules about hearsay and evidence generally can be tricky. So it is ok that you do not not understand how it works.
The books of the bible make the claim that this god exists and that magical events happened because of it. We have no evidence for those magical events. Thus we have claims in the bible, not facts.
When witness takes the stand, they are asked to report facts, not what they believe happened, what they saw happened. They don’t say that well, a murder happened, but I have no idea when. I also have no evidence that it happened at all. This is what the bible does. Chrisitans dont’ agree on dates for the events in the bible. They cannot show evidence that the events happened. All they have are claims “I believe this happened.”
Yep, witnesses often contradict each other and that destroys the reason to trust them so we need evidence to give weight to one or the other claim. If both claims can’t be trusted, then neither are true. This is not a matter of a jury, Joe.
I’m certainly not a lawyer, and if you are one, you are not very good at making arguments. I understand things well, and can happily point out where your attempts at analogy fail. Where you fail is that there should be evidence to support your claims e.g. the bible. There isn’t. All we have evidence for is that there are Christians and they believe in certain things. The reasons why they believe can be many, but evidence is not one of those reasons since are no evidence to support those beliefs. Claims, reasons, evidence. Just like the link I posted says.
“The books of the bible make the claim that this god exists and that magical events happened because of it. We have no evidence for those magical events. Thus we have claims in the bible, not facts.”
There are factual claims and legal claims in the law. Factual claims are claims about what occurred. The factual claims in the books of the bible are often viewed as having historical weight. Although it is true, that like just about all history, they involve hearsay.
“Yep, witnesses often contradict each other and that destroys the reason to trust them so we need evidence to give weight to one or the other claim. If both claims can’t be trusted, then neither are true. This is not a matter of a jury, Joe.”
Actually it is a matter for the Jury. Vel again ask your lawyer friends since for whatever reason you don’t believe me.
And just because we don’t trust claim that does not mean it is not true. A claim is true if it accords with reality. Whether you or I or anyone trusts the claim is irrelevant.
no, there are claims, Joe. The claims in the bible are no facts and are not considered to have “historical weight” other than the fact that Christians do exist and believe certain things happened. The supposed events in the bible cannot be shown to have happened, with the possible exception of the Babylonia captivity. For example, there is no mention in history of the supposed exodus and the related events. We see that the “exodus” is a myth: https://thesuperstitiousnakedape.wordpress.com/2016/06/26/kadesh-barnea-gaza-the-exodus/
You keep trying to use legal terms on historical claims and you keep failing, Joe. No one needs a jury to decide that the gospel authors contradict each other repeatedly. You hope no one notices and many Christians claim that the contradictions “aren’t important” or aren’t “major”, so they try to ignore them. History isn’t determined by a jury, and your bible fails to be history.
Again, Joe, we have different contradictory claims from your bible. You can’t show that any of them are true, and there are facts that show them to all be false. So your claims from the bible can’t be shown to accord with reality. Trust is built on reality. Faith isn’t. Where is the evidence that the flood happened? The destruction of Egypt’s Army? The major earthquake, sky darkening, and the dead walking around on one certain day, a day that Christians can’t even agree on? When did the exodus happen and who was the pharaoh? Why didn’t any of Egypt’s many enemies notice the supposed “exodus”? Why did the world go along as usual despite all of these fabulous supposed events happening?
We have you, the defense, if we want to go with the legal nonsense, who has a claim, who doesn’t even agree with all Christians, that his version is right. He has no evidence to support his claim, other than it is written in a collection of books, that he claims is inspired/written by a god. However, this collection, has claims that can’t all be the same since they are making claims about the same time period, post cruxifiction, and they can’t both be true e.g. people can’t be afraid for their lives and hiding, and also going back to celebrate in the temple of those who they are hiding from. Now, Joe, what would you think a judge *and* jury would say to that being presented to them, if it were not the bible we were talking about?
“no, there are claims, Joe. The claims in the bible are no facts and are not considered to have “historical weight” other than the fact that Christians do exist and believe certain things happened.”
Vel you are just all alone here with a very bizarre epistemology.
If you read a science journal that explains that an experiment happened and that this or that occured in the experiment, do you think that is evidence that the experiment occurred and this or that happened during the experiment? Or do you take the position that you have absolutely no evidence that the experiments happened and that certain things occurred, until you yourself do the experiment and confirm that it happens with your own eyes?
Again, we known what claims and what facts are. Facts can support claims, which are statements which may or may not be true. We do not have any evidence that the claims of the bible are true. What we have is a bible, and the fact that Christians did and do believe in it, though with wildly varying interpretations on what should be taken as literal, what should be considered metaphor, and what should be ignored altogether.
There is evidence that an experiment in a science journal has happened. Do you have any idea what peer-review means, Joe? It seems not. Your ignorance about how scientific research is done harms your attempt to create an analogy.
I am not alone at all, Joe, and repeating that false claim won’t make it magically come true. You might want to read what others think of the claims of the bible as history. A good one is here: http://www.debunking-christianity.com/2019/06/that-time-saint-peter-got-demotion.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FypxUn+%28Debunking+Christianity%29
“Again, we known what claims and what facts are. Facts can support claims, which are statements which may or may not be true. We do not have any evidence that the claims of the bible are true.”
Vel
Some claims are that facts happened. That is what we call a factual claim. And people take claims/testimony/statement that facts happened as evidence that the facts happened very very often.
If someone tells you a plane crashed into the world trade center that would be evidence and reason to believe it. Imagine several people told you that happened at work and then after work you went home while sitting there with a friend you saw the footage.
Now lets say you said “wow I had no reason to believe that happened!” Your friend, if he/she knew you had heard that it happened from other people, would think you were lying. Of course, the people claiming it happened is evidence that it happened.
Yes I do understand what peer review means. It does not always mean that the experiment is repeated. So the people doing the peer review are not always themselves doing the same experiment. And even if they did that would not make it non-hearsay for a person reading the article who didn’t do the experiment themselves.
The claims in the bible have no evidence that they happened, so they are not “factual claims”. If someone claimed that a plane flew into the WTC, they would have to prove that this happened with evidence and as you and I know, we have mountains of evidence. We do not have that for your bible’s claims. I have no reason to believe the claims in it because they do not match reality. The claim about the WTC is believable because we have terrorists, we have skyscrapers and we have disasters, but it is still a claim until there is evidence that it happened. Can people believe claims without evidence? Yep, and it doesn’t mean the claim is true. Can people refuse to believe claims *and* evidence that supports them? Sure, because they don’t like reality as it is but it doesn’t mean that the facts aren’t the facts.
We do not have multiple witnesses for the claims in your bible, and in any case, even multiple witnesses who claim to have seen something isn’t evidence that something did happen as claimed e.g. the mass visions that Catholics claim are true or the people who insist that aliens have abducted them. We do not have contemporary and antagonistic reports of the events that supposedly happened. We have both for 9/11. We have people making claims *and* having the evidence to support those claims. Again, I did find where people do take claims as evidence and that is not a good idea, e.g. the Salem Witch Trials.
That we have no evidence for the claims in the bible to support them indicates that there is reason not to believe them. That we have evidence for entirely different things happening is reason not to believe the bible’s claims.
You claimed this in your blog post “is a miracle evidence that God exists? Well it might or might not be. In the case of Jesus miracles I think they are clearly evidence of the Christian God. Why? Because Jesus says he was sent from God and that it was by God’s power he can do supernatural things. And then he does them. Does that fit our definition of relevant evidence.”
The authors of the bible have a character say something, then you assume it is true. Then you assume he really did do magic since he said he could. You assume that the bible is true because the bible says that a god wrote/inspired it, and thus it has to be true since this god wrote/inspired it. Do you see just how ridiculous this is? You can’t show that the bible is true because we have no evidence to support the essential events in it. You can’t show that a god exists, you assume it does like every other theist.
…5 years later…
“Where is your evidence, Joe?”
LOL!
and more silly hyperbole from JB. Again, JB can’t show any evidence for his version of his god either. Which Christian should I believe, Joe the Catholic or JB the evangelical? They don’t agree on what their god wants or how to be “saved”. They have different opinions on what parts of the bible to take as literal and which to take as metaphor or just ignore completely. Which of these two has the “truth”?
Neither of us has the truth.
You have all truth, Vel.
Perhaps, but I doubt it. But please do try to play the martyr, JB.
I have faith that you have all truth.
At the very least, you are smarter than billions of theists.
Nice to see you lying, JB, even if you are trying to be sarcastic. I might indeed be smarter than billions of theists. I require evidence for my beliefs. But nice attempt to try the appeal to popularity fallacy. Those billions don’t agree with you. Now, why would that be?
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Have you watched the OJ Simpson show on Netflix? I thought it was really good.
No I haven’t. I was in law school at the time and followed the trial pretty close when it happened. I may check it out.
It was good, although it’s probably not as enjoyable if you got to see the real trial.
Well it sort of unfolded on tv and at times was pretty boring. I would often just catch the highlights. A tv show might be more entertaining. But since I sort of already know about it I am not sure it would be as interesting.