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Author Topic:   Catholics & Inerrancy
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 68 of 89 (616396)
05-21-2011 12:18 PM
Reply to: Message 67 by GDR
05-20-2011 7:42 PM


Love is about evidence
I know that the Bible is true, not like I know that 2 plus 2 make 4, but like I know that my wife loves me.
You know that your wife loves you because of the evidence she loves you. She says she does (evidence.) She expends effort to do things that only benefit you (evidence.) She spends money to buy you things she thinks you'll like (evidence.) She swore an oath and bears a ring testifying to her love for you (evidence.) She forsakes all others for you (evidence.)
Your belief that you are loved by your wife isn't based on faith, it's based on evidence. If all that evidence changed - if your wife stopped wearing her wedding ring, if it seemed like she stopped thinking about you if you weren't in the room, if all of a sudden you only ever got to see the movies she liked, if she started sleeping with another man - then you would rapidly lose confidence in your belief that you were loved by your wife. Obviously - you would be a fool not to. People stop loving each other sometimes. It happens. I hope not with you and your wife, of course, but it could happen, and if it did it would be a lot better for the two of you to have the ability to recognize it than to persist in the deluded belief that your marriage was still working because you were still in love.
Love isn't faith, love is evidence. There would be no such phrase as "token of your affection" if love wasn't fundamentally an evidence-based process. It's not at all a mystery - people know they are loved by other people because of the evidence those people present for their love. Nobody takes love on faith.
And nobody should take the Bible, nor any other book, on faith either. Nobody should take anything on faith - faith is a form of self-delusion. It's just a jump to whatever conclusion you feel is the most satisfying.
In other words we should expect the church to be made up of people like myself - imperfect sinners.
If the church cannot perfect sinners, then what use is it?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 67 by GDR, posted 05-20-2011 7:42 PM GDR has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 69 by GDR, posted 05-21-2011 1:21 PM crashfrog has replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 72 of 89 (616428)
05-21-2011 10:13 PM
Reply to: Message 69 by GDR
05-21-2011 1:21 PM


Re: Love is about evidence
But we take all sorts of things on faith.
No, we take things on trust. Allow me to explain how that's different.
It can be as simple as having faith that the chair I am sitting on is going to continue to support me.
That's not faith. When you believe that something that has not let you down before is probably not going to let you down in the future, that's trust. Every time you sit in a chair and it doesn't break, that's evidence for your belief that chairs are a good place to sit.
But if a certain brand and model of chair collapsed every time you put your weight on it, you would rapidly come to the conclusion that this was a brand and model of chair that you couldn't trust. You would have no "faith" in its ability to take your weight.
When evidence of prior performance guides your belief about the reliability of future performance, that's not faith. That's trust.
I have faith that I have been created with purpose and by a loving creator.
Your beliefs about your creation and purpose are qualitatively different than your beliefs about whether your wife loves you or whether you can trust airplane technology. You trust that airplanes work and that your wife has affection for you, because you have ample evidence that both are true.
But you have faith in your divine purpose in spite of ample evidence to the contrary. That's why it's faith. And that's why it's an unreasonable belief, while belief in your wife's affections and the technology of flight are both very reasonable. The difference is that there's evidence for those two, but not for God.
Like I have said many times - being a Christian isn't necessarily going to make me a better kinder person than my atheistic next door neighbour, but it should make me a better kinder person than I had been previously.
Then why doesn't it ever do that? Why doesn't the church seem to be any more effective than the general rate that people improve all on their own?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 69 by GDR, posted 05-21-2011 1:21 PM GDR has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 73 by GDR, posted 05-21-2011 11:00 PM crashfrog has replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 74 of 89 (616453)
05-22-2011 11:23 AM
Reply to: Message 73 by GDR
05-21-2011 11:00 PM


Re: Love is about evidence
As far as my beliefs are concerned, my trust is in my Christian God as revealed to us in Jesus Christ.
Now we're getting somewhere.
As far as trust goes, you agree, I presume, that trust can be misplaced? That someone can trust in something that, in fact, is not worthy of their trust? That an individual makes an error, for the most part, when they place their trust in something they have ample evidence is not trustworthy?
This is where we run into difficulty. You aren't going to accept what I see as evidence as being any kind of evidence at all.
Well, you don't know that. I was a Christian once myself, there's no telling what kind of evidence I might accept.
But the fact that you have this suspicion indicates that, at some level at least, you understand that there's something fishy going on here. After all what kind of evidence depends on who is hearing it? That's not a feature of legitimate evidence.
After all, there's nothing that's so special about you that allows the standard rules of reason to be suspended when evidence is presented to you, but not when its presented to me. And if, I suspect, you wouldn't find your own encounters with the divine to be particularly compelling when informed of them happening to someone else, what's so special about you that when it happens to you, you're convinced?
If you would explain the Muslim's brush with Allah as a delusion, or as socialization, or even as a misinterpreted brush with "real" (Catholic) divinity, then why not explain your own personal account that way, as well?
What's so special about you? We shouldn't unjustly privilege the truth of personal stories just because they happened to us and not somebody else.
I've ended two sentences in a row with a preposition.
Contrary to most reflexive grammarians, as well as to the hated and incredibly erroneous Strunk and White, a preposition is a perfectly natural thing to end a sentence with.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 73 by GDR, posted 05-21-2011 11:00 PM GDR has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 75 by GDR, posted 05-22-2011 7:09 PM crashfrog has replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 76 of 89 (616498)
05-22-2011 10:41 PM
Reply to: Message 75 by GDR
05-22-2011 7:09 PM


Re: Love is about evidence
Of course trust can be misplaced and I can't prove that my trust in God isn't.
Ok, so then we've established that it's not really the evidence that leads to your belief; it's a function of something else.
Because it feels good? Because it's what your parents taught you? You'd have to be more specific, but I suspect if you take a long hard look at why belief in God is in your life, you'll see that it's not on the basis of any intellectually-compelling evidence, but on the basis of some emotional fulfillment you get from belief. An irrational basis, in other words.
I contend that there is evidence that leads us to the conclusion that the verse I just quoted is something worthwhile on which to base our lives, whether we be Christian, Muslim, Atheist or anything else.
Doing justice and appreciating kindness have secular merit which everybody recognizes. They're not evidence in support of any system of belief.
I agree that I'm not special nor particularly bright.
I apologize if I have you the impression that I was belittling you. I really don't mean to say "you're not special" in the sense of you not being bright or something, I just mean that you're not a special type of person who is any less susceptible to mistake, misperception, or even outright temporary mental illness and hallucination than any other human being whose impassioned personal accounts of their interactions with the divine might nonetheless be met with skepticism by you or any other reasonable person.
I think too that what is implicit in your post is the idea that my theological views make me right with God, and the fact that as you don't hold those views you are doomed for eternity
That's not really what I'm getting at. What I'm saying is, if someone came to you and told you all about how they had direct contact with Vishnu, how they had all these experiences that proved that Vishnu existed and was the one true God, you would be skeptical of these accounts. I know you would be because you're a Christian and not a Hindu - presumably, as part of that, you learned at least something about the world's other religions but determined that they either weren't right, or weren't right for you. (I don't know precisely where you stand on religious pluralism, but it's a matter of logic that the world's mutually contradicting religions can't all be right. Some of them have to be in error, and I presume you believe that it's the religions you're not a believer in that you believe are wrong, because what kind of believer thinks his own religion is wrong?)
Plus, you warned me that I probably wouldn't put much stock in your evidence.
So, you have all this evidence for your beliefs. But, you recognize that if it was another person of another religion who had all this evidence instead of you, you wouldn't find it very compelling. You wouldn't find it convincing at all.
But what does it matter who has the evidence? The evidence is the evidence; it doesn't matter who has it. If it's not compelling if it happened to a third-party Hindu, why should it be compelling just because it happened to you?
What's so special about you, that evidence that you have should be more compelling than evidence someone else has?
I don't try to explain other people's experience of God under any name except to say that if it isn't consistent with the message of God's desire that we love unselfishly, then I would have to question it.
So what's so special about you? If you'd question another person's experience with the divine, why shouldn't you question your own?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 75 by GDR, posted 05-22-2011 7:09 PM GDR has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 77 by GDR, posted 05-23-2011 11:35 AM crashfrog has replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 78 of 89 (616581)
05-23-2011 12:43 PM
Reply to: Message 77 by GDR
05-23-2011 11:35 AM


Re: Love is about evidence
Actually I started practicing Christianity around 32 years ago after reading CS Lewis' "Mere Christianity".
What did you find so compelling about "Mere Christianity"? Surely it wasn't Lewis' logically-fallacious "trilemma"?
I just wanted to point out that it is the message of the Bible and that it is consistent with what most of us perceive to be true of the world.
So what? Much of the Bible isn't consistent with what is true of the world. Should I be impressed that it gets some of the simple stuff right? Is the Bible somehow more correct than any other book written by regular people?
It isn't evidence that is going to convince you or anyone else on this forum but it is something to consider.
Ok, so consider it with me. What is unexpected or surprising about the fact that the Bible tells us to be nice to each other (when it's not telling us to kill each other)?
Am I supposed to start believing in the truth of the Christian religion just because the Bible says something nice? Here's a thought experiment - suppose you were going to start a fake religion. Since your biggest problem is basically marketing - you have this new product you want people to adopt - don't you need to have an attractive dogma? One that plays to what people want from religion? Wouldn't you arrive at some variation on "Be excellent to one another!" just as a function of competition with all the other religions that say that?
I believe generally that all of the major religions of the world have some revelation of God at their core and then a whole bunch of stuff added on by mankind.
All of them? Scientology has genuine divinity? How about worship of the Flying Spaghetti Monster? If I made up a new religion right now would you really think that it had "some revelation of God" at its core?
Isn't it possible that a totally man-made religion could become popular? How about people who use Apple products? That's at least some kind of religion, right?
If a religion could be totally man-made, isn't it possible that many of the world's most popular religions are? Isn't it likely that they are, in fact? And isn't it at least possible that your religion is one of the completely made-up ones?
What's the basis for your assumption that the world's religions have a shared core of genuine divine revelation?
Jesus tells us that.
What makes you think that there was a Jesus, or that the Bible accurately recounts his ministry?
Isn't it possible that, rather than being "liar, lunatic, or Lord", the Jesus of the Bible is just a fictional character? That his most famous sayings have no more historical veracity than Hamlet's soliloquy? Isn't that the missing option in Lewis' traditional "trilemma"?
We all come to some conclusion based on the evidence that we have.
So if you were to show me your evidence, why do you think that I would come to a different conclusion?
What's so special about you?
In the end it’s all about where our heart is. Do we love selfishly or do we love unselfishly?
Unselfishly, no doubt, but what about that is support for the truth claims of any religion?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 77 by GDR, posted 05-23-2011 11:35 AM GDR has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 79 by GDR, posted 05-23-2011 4:19 PM crashfrog has replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 80 of 89 (616633)
05-23-2011 5:13 PM
Reply to: Message 79 by GDR
05-23-2011 4:19 PM


Re: Love is about evidence
I think what most impressed me about "Mere Christianity" was the basic argument for theism in general. Once I accepted that theism was at the very least a strong possibility it seemed to me that it was reasonable that there was an overarching plan, and that a creator would have an ongoing interest in what had been created.
That's fair, but then why don't we back up to why you think "theism could be a strong possibility." Theism is, frankly, an impossibility.
. I am completely unconvinced that unselfish love exists due to completely natural causes.
Unselfish love exists, as far as we're aware, only to an extremely rare degree so one very reasonable explanation is that "unselfish love" is just one of those things people do for no good reason, like watch Seth Rogan movies.
The Bible was written by a large number of authors over hundreds of years. They were people of different cultures and agendas. It is hard to conceive of all these writers over the centuries conniving to make up a religion.
Having read the Bible, its impossible to imagine Bible writers being unified on anything. They can't even agree on their accounts of the central stories of Christianity. There's even two completely different accounts of the same supposed Genesis story.
But while the Bible was written over many hundreds of years, it was largely assembled and edited - into one single book - by a single council over about 15 years. That process definitely was a function of "conniving", the entire purpose of the Council of Trent was to assemble a unified Bible that supported Catholicism and would provide a basis for challenging the Protestant "heresies."
So to whatever extent the various Biblical sources agree on anything, that may simply be a function of Council of Trent editing.
As you quoted, I did say major religions.
So, Scientology?
I'm not knowledgeable enough to be much more specific but I know when I read the book of Buddha I was amazed at how the views of the first Buddha, (about 700 years before the birth of Jesus if I remember correctly), were very consistent with what Jesus taught in regards to loving neighbour and enemy.
Sure, but again, that's explainable simply as a function of marketing. All soaps are going to be advertised as getting you clean, because that's why you buy soap. All religions are going to prescribe that you love your neighbors (and love your enemies, at the same time that you destroy them) because that's what people want from their religions.
I see no motivation for them to make up a religion that was antagonistic to everyone who held power at the time.
At what time? Christianity and the Christian Bible didn't just pop into full-fledged existence in 33 AD. Indeed there wasn't a Bible, in the sense of being a collected ream of scripture, until several centuries after the events it supposedly recounts.
And, of course, if the market for your religion is a widespread, disenfranchised lower class, then a religion that promises that powerful malefactors are going to get theirs in the afterlife is obviously incredibly attractive. It's only recently - Biblically-speaking - that Christianity has been a religion for the well-heeled. For almost a thousand years Christianity was a religion that survived by ministering to the powerless and downtrodden. Much like a pair of Chuck Taylor All-Stars, the brand of Christianity has all the vestigial trappings of a market it's no longer meant to appeal to.
I think that the decision comes down to whether they were right or wrong, and to what degree.
I agree. Their belief in what they wrote has nothing to do with that; whether they were right or wrong is a function of evidence. So what's the evidence for the historicity of the gospels?
I am convinced that Jesus was resurrected with a new physicality. That is what the Gospels tell us. That isn't consistent with what a first century Jew would have written.
The First century Jew who wrote the earliest Gospel would have had no way to know, the supposed resurrection having occurred decades before he could possibly have been born. And it wouldn't have been a Jew at all, it would have been a Christian.
I'm not saying there wasn't a very early church, I'm not saying that Christianity is a 16th-century invention. That's clearly not the case - the roots of the early church go back pretty far. But they don't go all the way back to a historical Jesus. They just don't. They go back to people telling the Bible writers what they were told by the church, not to anything that anybody saw with their own eyes.
There's no eyewitness testimony in the Bible. Absolutely none. There's just people talking about eyewitness testimony they heard about. "Friend of a friend totally saw the empty tomb!" It's all apocryphal.
The philosophical and theological evidence, including the Bible, has led me to the conclusion that the Christian faith, (as I understand it), represents ultimate truth.
If that philosophical and theological evidence isn't based on something material, how is it any different from make-believe?
Because I believe we know intuitively that unselfish love is what we should aspire to.
Agreed, but doesn't that make it more likely that religion is just a kind of social lever invented to help people reach that aspiration?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 79 by GDR, posted 05-23-2011 4:19 PM GDR has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 81 by GDR, posted 05-23-2011 6:57 PM crashfrog has replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 82 of 89 (616654)
05-23-2011 7:55 PM
Reply to: Message 81 by GDR
05-23-2011 6:57 PM


Re: Love is about evidence
I believe that the idea of a creative intelligence is a more reasonable answer to why there is something instead of nothing, why the universe is so highly tuned, why do we care when someone we have never met suffers or for that matter even when it is someone we've met, why am I able to sense beauty, why the sense of awe of majesty about the world etc, than the idea that it all just happened
Most of that simply isn't true. The universe isn't "fine-tuned" for life; it's about as fine-tuned for life as a fork is fine-tuned to eat soup. As human beings we don't actually care all that much when people we've not met suffer, unless we're seeing it on TV. Beauty and ugliness are just subjective opinions, they're not things that really exist. And none of that seems to have anything to do with the existence of God that I can see. It just seems to be a function of your sense that some things are significant, and your opinion that if something is significant, it must have something to do with God.
But your sense of significance is just something brains do. It's easily triggered with drugs or even trans-cranial magnetic stimulation.
People consistently put money into the tin cup of the homeless, people regularly give up time to serve others, and people support others on the other side of the world that theyhave never met nor ever will meet.
Sure, but if they do it because it makes them feel good, or because it makes them look swell in front of their friends, or they enjoy the prospect of putting others in debt to them, is that really "unselfish love"? There are a lot of reasons to engage in altruism - especially cheap altruism, like giving some pocket change to a beggar - that aren't examples of truly selfless behavior. Almost every culture has some form of enforced "gift-giving" on certain occasions, which aren't gifts at all but reciprocal market exchanges.
I'm surprised that you would consider that a major religion but I confess I only know of it - not about it.
According to them it has 8 million adherents. That's a lot more than, say, Baha'i.
Religion has as often as not been about gaining power in the here and now.
Religion is always about gaining power in the here and now.
Still, that is consistent with what Jesus taught. The whole message was that it wasn't about a power grab or about attaining wealth. Jesus said that it was for the humble.
And, of course, the Christian conquerers who laid waste to kingdoms styled themselves as humble. What Jesus said, or is assumed to have said, has changed throughout the centuries. Every generation reinvents Jesus as necessary for their own purposes. To people who need a king, he's the King of Kings. To servants he's the one who washed the feet of the servants. To slaves he's a liberator who promised slaves would inherit the Earth. To men of peace he's the man who said to turn the other cheek. To men of war he's the man who claimed not to bring peace, but a sword. To those who abhor conspicuous consumption, he's the man who claimed that a camel would pass through the eye of a needle before a rich man would enter Heaven. To those who love money he's the man who claimed the poor would always be with us.
The Bible says so much contradictory stuff that everyone who reads it can find Jesus's support for their lifestyle. That's why there's rich Christians and Christians who hate money. Gay Christians and Christians who hate gays. Christians who believed that God wanted blacks to be slaves and Christians who believed that God wanted blacks to be free. It's almost the perfect religion for attracting as many people as possible, because the only things the Bible says you have to do are the things you're already doing - be neighborly, don't expect yourself to be perfect, forgive the people you care about and try not to think too hard about your enemies.
Sure, but Christianity existed from the time of the resurrection on.
Well, no. There's no contemporary record of Christianity in 33AD. It's decades after the supposed "resurrection" that there's any Christianity.
I believe that the veracity of the Gospels is dependent on the resurrection.
I would certainly agree that the historicity of the resurrection is the crucial determinant of whether Christianity is real and true, or just a really good setting for fiction.
The trouble is there's no evidence for the resurrection; there's just a bunch of people a few decades after it supposedly happened who believed it did. But that doesn't mean anything. Just because the resurrection didn't happen doesn't mean that people knew it didn't happen. There are plenty of martyrs for things that turned out to be false.
According to the book of Acts that isn't the case.
No, not even according to Acts. The Acts author doesn't recount any personal eyewitness testimony, and since Acts shares authorship with Luke, and the preface to Luke explains that the source is "testimony handed down to us", we know that Acts isn't direct eyewitness testimony, it's hearsay of eyewitness testimony.
There's no direct testimony of the ministry of Jesus. None at all. And there's no contemporary mention of the ministry of Jesus. None at all. And there are no contemporary accounts of the state execution of Jesus. None at all.
I realize that the book of Acts was written years later but that doesn't mean that it isn't accurate.
That actually does mean it isn't accurate. That's exactly what it means. When people wait decades to write things down - if they even experienced them, which we know is not the case in Acts - they don't remember it correctly. That's just a function of human memory.
The empty tomb is meaningless without the resurrected Jesus and to that there were many witnesses according again to the Biblical accounts which of course you are free to reject.
There are no eyewitnesses in the Bible. There are only reports of eyewitnesses - again, it's no more compelling than saying "a friend of a friend totally saw it, once." The Bible does not mention even a single person as an eyewitness to accounts who can actually be verified as having witnessed anything at all.
If it is strictly material world I want a religion that is going serve me and not someone else.
If religion has benefits, as you continually insist it does, then you've already identified the ways in which you are personally served by your religious affiliation. Everybody recognizes that religion is a way to get rich. The Catholic Church has billions of dollars in assets, real estate, and cultural treasures. It has a larger GDP than several African nations. Ron Hubbard, of course, is most famous for recognizing that religion is a source of wealth. Many Christian churches simply lampshade the connection between profit and religion by preaching an explicit prosperity Gospel.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 81 by GDR, posted 05-23-2011 6:57 PM GDR has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 83 by GDR, posted 05-23-2011 11:39 PM crashfrog has replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 86 of 89 (617117)
05-26-2011 12:22 AM
Reply to: Message 83 by GDR
05-23-2011 11:39 PM


Re: Love is about evidence
I think that it is reasonable to take the position that things like love, beauty etc ,and particularly because they are subjective, are unlikely to come from a totally natural world.
And I guess I just don't see how that follows.
I believe that there are people everywhere and of all faiths that are able to give, privately and humbly, just because they believe it's the right thing to do.
Well, I believe that's the case as well. All these forms of altruism are practiced - true altruism and reciprocal altruism. There's plenty of anonymous charity, and there's plenty of headlining charity.
I'm just saying, there's not so much true selflessness that we can't countenance a natural explanation for it. Most "selflessness" is actually self-serving. Not all of it, but definitely most of it.
Christianity may be about gaining power but as taught by Jesus, (certainly not all of its adherents), it is the power to love and serve.
I guess, but even as early as 70 AD the Christian church was trying to expand its temporal power and wealth.
I know what Jesus says but the phenomenon of Christianity has always been about the expansion of power and influence.
He is the servant king who calls his followers to be a servant people.
Except to the followers who believe he calls them to be a conquering army. The "message of Jesus" is all things to all people. It's justified mass slaughter, slavery, exploitation, and a host of other ills. Sure, you can tell me those people are "doing it wrong", that they've misunderstood the message of Jesus - but that's exactly what they tell me about you!
The first Pauline epistles were written within 20 plus or minus 5 years of the resurrection. There would have still been eye witnesses at that time, including the apostles
That's the absolute earliest they could possibly have been written; there's ample reason to believe they were written much later, since the epistles appear to reference events known to have happened about 70 AD or so. And there's just no evidence that "eyewitnesses" contributed anything to any of the epistles.
Both Jesus and His brother James are mentioned briefly in Josephus.
Yes - as figures purported to be central to the beliefs of Christians. Josephus isn't writing about Jesus; he's writing about what Christians are saying about Jesus. This is getting into what I'm talking about in another thread - that Josephus isn't a primary source, he's just repeating something he heard from the early Christian church.
There's plenty of evidence for the existence of a Christian church in the middle of the first century. But trying to shoehorn that into evidence of Jesus is just a sleight of hand.
As far as I know everyone, who has studied that period, concede that as anything written was not easily reproduced, that the human memory was far better than it is now as it was used so much more.
That's just a self-serving and convenient assumption that flies in the face of substantial evidence. While it's possible to train your memory, the techniques aren't known to have existed at the time and at any rate, memory was widely viewed to be more or less infallible, so why would anyone have bothered?
What we know from neurology is that, rather than "improving with use", every time your mind accesses a memory, the details change. You actually remember it a little bit differently every time you think about it; you alter and edit the memory to fit an established narrative. Your friend tells you how he remembers it, and that changes your memory - now you "remember" details you had "forgotten" - actually, you're confabulating details and inserting them into the memory. That's as true in the first century as it is today. No serious scholar of human neurobiology could possibly conclude that "memory was better because it was used more."
There are all sorts of accounts of people who witnessed the events but I'm not sure what would constitute verification for you.
The writings of direct eyewitness, or their transcribed testimony. Barring that, specific and verifiable accounts of eyewitness testimony, not what the Bible actually has: "many saw this" and "the crowd saw that" and so on. Utterly anonymous and nonspecific - the mark of fabrication. "A hundred people saw it" isn't any kind of evidence if not a single one of the hundred can be produced. Saying you have eyewitness testimony isn't eyewitness testimony.
Sad isn't it.
And predictable, unfortunately. I don't envy the religious for what they have to put up with from their fellows.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 83 by GDR, posted 05-23-2011 11:39 PM GDR has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 87 by GDR, posted 05-26-2011 1:20 AM crashfrog has not replied

  
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