My problem is that I keep trying to work with your view of what constitutes evidence.
I'm not employing fringe ideas of the nature of evidence. My views are emphatically and overwhelmingly mainstream. They aren't obscure but are the same way science views evidence. In science observation is the foundation of all evidence. There isn't any other type of evidence.
Your true problem is that you're trying to contort the definition of evidence just enough to where it allows the gospel myths to be considered evidence but doesn't raise howls from those who know what evidence really is. That's not possible.
The Bible is a collection of books with hundreds of individuals collectively involved. Each book has its own style and written in tits own culture and time and with its own biases.
In my view it is a history of the progressive understanding of God by humans. It concludes with the life of Jesus and His death and resurrection.
Except that the Bible is not the conclusion of our understanding. Our evolving interpretation continues to this day. You're changing understanding is why you started this thread. You would do well to keep in mind that the progressive understanding of the Greek, Roman and Norse gods ended in the firm conclusion that they are all myths.
In the same way our current understanding of Christianity is not fixed. Christianity has not been promised eternal status as the world's dominant religion. One day the dominant understanding will be that it, too, like all other religions, is just a collection of myths.
Is it evidence and if not then why not.
We've been over this. Why are you yet again beginning discussion of this question from square one? Might it be because you didn't like the direction it was taking before and so abandoned it until such time as it faded into the background of your memory and you could raise it yet again as if for the first time?
I'm not asking whether or not it is good or poor evidence but simply is it evidence at all.
How many times have I and others said (in a variety of ways) that the Bible is a collection of fact, fiction and the unverifiable? Do you recall any of those times at all? Even one? You either abandoned them or circled back to the beginning on every occasion.
Percy writes:
Subjectively choosing what to believe based upon personal preference is the opposite of objectively assessing evidence. In fact, what you're doing is antithetical to any rational process. You're choosing your beliefs first and then seeking evidence for them by selectively choosing Biblical passages. In a rational process you gather and assess evidence before reaching conclusions.
To a degree that is true,...
If it is true to the slightest degree then what you're doing is invalid. Even worse, you seem to be doing it in a vacuum all by yourself, which is how you've gone so far off the rails. If you're developing your ideas with other like-minded people then I missed your mention of it, sorry.
...but the beliefs that I choose first are based on a holistic understanding of Jesus gained by understanding Him by reading the entire NT, and then reading about Him by numerous scholars and theologians including those who reject Him.
We don't care what beliefs you choose, and we don't care how much or who you read about Jesus to form your beliefs. Just don't call your beliefs evidence-based with no justification whatsoever.
With that foundational understanding in place, and with reading up on the time and culture I can assess individual passages and accounts using that lens.
Your lens is very credulous.
I'm sure that if Jesus had raised up a great army, won numerous battles, ruled nations etc we would have all of that kind of information as well. He was from the working poor, had no army and was executed. Yes, it was claimed that He was resurrected but saw His followers being denied and persecuted even to death by those in power.
Jesus's amazing miracles and resurrection were far more remarkable and noteworthy than any army but made no impression at all upon ancient Judaea. What we know actually did happen was that decades later amazing stories about the preacher Jesus gradually spread though the ancient world creating a new religion.
Percy writes:
No objective evidence of any historical event? Are you daft? One characteristic you share with the Trump nuts is the ability to utter the absurd without shame or remorse. I don't get you.
I clearly didn't word that well so I'll try again. Let's look at the Battle of Hastings. Yes we have hard evidence that the battle occurred. It is popularly believed that King Harold died by being shot in the eye as recorded at the time but the fact of which is disputed. Is the fact that someone recorded that evidence to be considered or is it not evidence as we don't have a body left to examine?
Unlike my mother I wasn't raised in Canada and know little British history. I don't know anything about any dispute about how King Harold died. But maybe this from the article on history from Wikipedia will be helpful:
Wikipedia: Historians seek knowledge of the past using historical sources such as written documents, oral accounts, art and material artifacts, and ecological markers. History is not complete and still has debatable mysteries.
So whatever the evidence for how King Harold died, historians will no doubt endlessly assess and discuss it. This is in contrast to Christian theologians who long ago concluded that Jesus's resurrection is a fact.
I don't see how you come to that conclusion. Firstly it isn't about asking to make my life, ( or for others in the congregation), better. It is about us being better people, not for any reward in this life or the next.
Have you passed this discarding of a basic Christian principle by any other Christians? Isn't one of the big promises made to Christians throughout history, especially those worst off, that they will get their reward in the next life? How much of a thousand or two years of Christian belief are you willing to toss aside?
I'm saying this not because we care which parts of Christianity you accept, reject or modify, but just to call it to your attention when your ideas stray miles and miles away from long accepted Christian doctrine. If you can't even provide evidence for mainstream Christian ideas, how are you going to provide evidence for those ideas that are uniquely your own?
Good questions and there really isn't a good answer. At this point it comes down to faith,...
It all comes down to faith, not just about this "lion laying with the lamb" issue, but all the other issues, too. Why isn't faith enough for you? Why do you feel it essential that your faith be bolstered with evidence?
I believe that as a Christian I should be vegetarian,...
Why should we only avoid eating life that has a nervous system? Why isn't it bad to eat any life? Science might one day discover the pain and horror vegetables experience as they are plucked from the vine before being sliced, diced, boiled and eaten. Imagine the torture grain experiences as threshers rip it asunder seeking its seeds. Why should people be the only life in God's creation exempt from being consumed?
Of course there are practical considerations...
However, I do believe that God does give our lives meaning and purpose and that somehow there is meaning and purpose beyond the world as it is. I believe that on faith.
Other than that we have different conceptions of God, same for me. Why can't that be enough?
Interestingly, in the Olivet Discourse Jesus appears to confess that his miracles are fake:
quote:For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. —Matthew 24:24
He's saying others will come after him performing the same miracles and that these miracles will appear as miraculous as his own but that they should not accept them as actual miracles. But if these miracles aren't real but are indistinguishable from Jesus's own miracles then how can they be sure that Jesus's miracles were real.
The obvious answer is that they cannot.
The whole religious thing with miracles is hokum anyway. The RCC actually has a process for deciding which inexplicable events are miraculous, as if anything could be more absurd.
The point being made is that Jesus never gave the sermon on the mount, it's a written literary discourse composed by whoever Matthew was, around 50 years after the supposed death of Jesus. It's based around Old Testament stories. Matthew never met or heard Jesus speak, he was writing propaganda 50 years after a non-existent event. This is not a marginal opinion, it's mainstream
Yes, it is the majority opinion that has been assumed since about 1900 or so but it is becoming less so.
Your think that Christian apologists are increasingly concluding that the Sermon on the Mount was real? What makes you think this?
Even it were true, you're drawing upon a diminishing population. I don't know about Canada, but in the US the percent of the population that identifies as Christian has declined by around 15% over the past 15 years, from around 78% in 2007 to around 63% today. Meanwhile the religiously unaffiliated has grown from around 16% to 28%.
Also worth noting is that among the diminishing Protestant population the percentage of evangelicals is increasing. If you're correct about apologist opinion about the Sermon on the Mount, that might explain it. It's not because Methodist and Lutheran theologians are increasingly thinking this, but just that Protestantism is becoming increasingly fundamentalist.
You are incorrect. There is more than sufficient evidence of much ancient history. We know that Ramesses II, Sennacherib, Nebhuchadnezzar, Zedekiah, Alexandar the Great, Ptolemy, Caesar, Mark Anthony, Ptolemy and Genghis Ghan all existed because of the historical record they left behind. Of Jesus's historical record there is nothing, just inconsistent and contradictory religious stories. Even his primary evangelist never met him.
Firstly we have physical evidence of all of those people because they were military leaders and military leaders leave a record because conflicts leave a visual physical and political record of what they have done.
Think about what you're saying, that people feel that armies, wars and politics are much more worth recording than miracles and resurrections. They only believe miracles and resurrections from 40-150 years in the past are worth writing about.
The historical record of Jesus was written by a variety of authors that did agree on the primary issues but with inconsistencies on some minor points. As Jesus didn't build roads, win or lose battles, was lower middle class and held no political power indicates to me that there was something extraordinary that resulted in us having any record at all.
You don't have a record. You have religious stories.
Percy writes:
It was prophecy:
..and you know that how? Jesus was a man who predicted the destruction of the Temple because He knew the Roman record of what they did to quell rebellions.
Now you're just making it up. There's nothing in the historical record about Romans using temple destruction to quell rebellions. If you think there is then tell us what temples were destroyed to quell the rebellious armies that opposed Roman rule during the roughly first century period. You're putting thoughts into Jesus's head that there's no reason to believe were there.
Percy writes:
As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down. —Luke 21:6
Yes, He predicted the destruction of the Temple which I'm sure many 1st century Jews would when looking at the Roman record.
Again, tell us please about this Roman record of temple destruction. Here's a list of 1st century revolts against Rome. Please tell us which temples were destroyed.
Also of course the prediction only proved to be mostly true because the western wall is still standing. On another point it is hardly something Luke would have included of it was written post 70AD.
On the contrary, anyone writing an account of Jesus's life with an eye toward persuasion would very much have wanted to credit Jesus with having the gift of prophesy.
Percy writes:
So you're saying that in the years after the destruction of the Temple everyone forgot the Sadducees? I don't think so.
Not forgotten but simply irrelevant.
Largely gone but certainly not forgotten. The Jesus stories in circulation had his opposition to the Sudducees of the Temple as a driving force behind his death. Why would the gospel writers leave out this part of the story just because the Sadducees were no longer a force after the destruction of the Temple? The stories that came down to the gospel writers contained large elements of the Temple era. They wouldn't leave out the Sadducees in a story about 30 AD just because they were writing in the post-Temple period.
Percy writes:
And now you're contradicting what you just said about no one being left to explain a difference over theology with the Sadducees.
No. It isn't that there was no one left to tell about it, but simply as it was no longer relevant it would not be such a huge focus in the Gospels.
Again, the gospel writers wouldn't leave out elements of the stories that were very relevant to what happened to Jesus.
Percy writes:
All the synoptic gospels relate this story using the metaphor of the dove. They are not cross-correlative independent accounts. They aren't even contemporary sources but were written forty to a hundred years after the fact.
This is an account of something that happened prior to Him forming a group of followers and so it is likely form the account of some individual that passed it along orally and so it is from a single source.
You're agreeing with my point but phrasing it like rebuttal. I said the gospels were not cross-correlative independent accounts. In case it isn't obvious, that means they had a single source or possibly were developed by independent communities that shared information. We're in agreement that the stories were spread orally and sprang from a single source. I also believe there were written sources earlier than the gospels that haven't survived, like the purported Q.
As you know I contend that the Gospels were much earlier.
You contend lots of things for which you have no evidence.
Percy writes:
Why are you seeking excuses for believing what you like? You don't need them. Everybody's fine with you believing whatever you like.
Good, as I'm fine with you believing whatever it is that you believe. Mind you, I have a fairly good idea of what you don't believe but I haven't been able to discern much of a picture of what you do believe.
Why would what I believe spiritually have any relevance in this thread? My beliefs are strictly mine, they are shared by no one else except by coincidence, and they have absolutely no evidence whatsoever that I am aware of.
One unknown clue came when I saw that you had inserted "700" in your broken link and so I assumed you wanted to highlight the term "700" with the numerous books (turnip twaddlers) that I read on an ongoing basis.
"700" is the width. When you enter "[img=<positive-integer>]" then the image is displayed with that width in pixels. See the dBCodes Help section on displaying images. For example, here's a width of 200:
If you hover over the image the cursor will change to a magnifying glass with a "+", and if you now click on the image it will expand to its actual size.
I've been slowly working my way through this thread trying to catch up, but GDR has replied to only 1 of my last 23 replies to him. GDR is doing a much better job of staying current than I am, but he's doing it by ignoring posts, far too many for it to make sense to post any more responses, so I'm going to cease activity in this thread. I've read up as far as about the 20th of December.
I'm sorry we weren't able to find any common ground.
I have been away and was very busy over the whole Christmas period.
There's no rush, take as much time as you need. I thought it might be prudent to withdraw from the thread because of how few of my messages you were responding to. For example, on December 22 you replied to my Message 1568, then you skipped 16 messages and on December 30 replied to my Message 1660. If you intend to eventually reply to them then I'm happy to wait for as much time as you need, but if not then I think most would agree that with 90% of my messages being ignored to continue would be ill-advised and an enormous waste of time.
It seems that you are essentially closing the the thread...
I don't know why you would think that. I'm a participant, not a moderator, in this thread.
...and along with the fact that it has seldom been on topic anyway...
You're not specific, but from my side it felt like you wanted to skip past the preliminaries (paraphrasing, "just accept that there is evidence behind those portions of the Bible I say there is") and right into an apologist discussion. I'm sorry we didn't do a better job of covering what you wanted to discuss, but as I said, I'm not a moderator in this thread. The only remotely moderator-type things I've done are to explain a couple of the less familiar features of the board software and perhaps to discourage the posting of bare links.
I think that unless someone has something specific they want me to answer...
I'd like to see you address the many issues I raised in the messages I posted to you. I didn't write them just to hear myself think.
I've combed through a very long series of posts by you and have tried to condense it down into the salient points. It's taken all afternoon and I have done what I can.
Thanks.
There is no physical evidence, other than what is written that can be examined. So it simply boils down to how much credence do we give the ancient texts.
For a believer, sure. Believe what you want. But for a historian conducting systematic evidence-based research that's a horrible methodology.
Percy writes:
The Bible is not a "historical account." It's a mishmash of fact, history, religion, fantasy, and fallacies that people thought true over 2000 years ago. You're correct about confidence depending upon cross-confirming accounts, but there are no such accounts for the religious stories in Bible, including the accounts in the NT.
Here is a site that outlines what constitutes historical evidence. Types of historical evidence One of the statements is this. “All historical sources that have been written are considered written evidence. “.
I'm debating you, not websites. I didn't look at the website but suspect you've got it wrong, the one sentence you quoted notwithstanding.
But I shouldn't have to wonder whether you interpreted a website correctly. I should be able to read your own thinking in your own words where you only use websites as supporting references. If you want to argue from a position of everything historical that's been written is evidence then say that and we'll go from there.
Percy writes:
There are numerous reasons to know that . Here is Mark 13:14.________________________________________ 14 “When you see ‘the abomination that causes desolation’ standing where it does not belong—let the reader understand—then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. ________________________________________ Actually it's a reference to what had already happened, the destruction of the Temple and the retreat to the stronghold at Masada.
Wrong. It refers back to Daniel 12:11 where it talks about the abomination that causes desolation. Firstly Mark starts off with “when you see” which clearly shows it hasn’t happened yet and again why flee to the mountains, (Masada is by the Dead Sea and hardly in the mountains) if it has already happened?
I'm not going to play Biblical apologetics with you, but regarding mountains, the entire Dead Sea region is extremely rugged and mountainous, despite its low elevation. If you truly don't believe Masada is in a mountainous region then watch just the very beginning of this video showing the mountainous topography:
Percy writes:
Yes indeedy. And you're not half bad at it. The conundrum is why you can't take the next step and see that all your thinking is arbitrary with respect to the Bible, and driven from within with respect to yourself.
That is the equivalent of walking into a library and reading a book and find that you are in disagreement with it and on that basis reject the other books in the library.
What you quoted from me isn't about that at all, and you've got my position on the Bible completely backwards. I don't reject anything in the Bible out of hand. I'm a Wittgenstein disciple: Of that which one cannot speak one must remain silent. In other words, don't draw conclusions without seeking and evaluating the evidence.
But what you quoted wasn't me saying anything about my own opinion of the Bible. It was me commenting on the way you think about the Bible, which is arbitrary and driven from within. Your own internal feelings are driving how you interpret the Bible. There's no objectivity, and certainly no evidence, behind your conclusions.
Percy writes:
I think GDR's the one who should watch this. Ehrman says all the things we've been telling him about history in this thread. Ehrman focuses on the resurrection, but the principles he describes apply to everything in the past, which includes all aspects of Jesus's life, including his very existence.
From an amazon site detailing the point of Ehrman’s book Did Jesus Exist From that site
quote: In Did Jesus Exist? historian and Bible expert Bart Ehrman confronts the question, "Did Jesus exist at all?" Ehrman vigorously defends the historical Jesus, identifies the most historically reliable sources for best understanding Jesus’ mission and message, and offers a compelling portrait of the person at the heart of the Christian tradition. Known as a master explainer with deep knowledge of the field, Bart Ehrman methodically demolishes both the scholarly and popular “mythicist” arguments against the existence of Jesus. Marshaling evidence from within the Bible and the wider historical record of the ancient world, Ehrman tackles the key issues that surround the mythologies associated with Jesus and the early Christian movement.
Maybe you should read it.
Maybe you should read what I wrote. I was commenting to Tangle on the principles of historical study that Ehrman espouses and that I thought it would benefit you to watch it. I said nothing about what Ehrman believes about Jesus. Here's the video I was commenting on:
I'm going to stop replying to your post now. I haven't read the rest of it, I appreciate that you tried, but so far most of what you've said is either wrong or misinterprets what you quoted or responds to a completely different point than what you quoted. This isn't going in a constructive direction.
No, I couldn't be bothered. Read the article I provided ... I assume u can read English.
I'm just a participant in this thread, but to back up what Ringo said, the Forum Guidelines say:
Bare links with no supporting discussion should be avoided. Make the argument in your own words and use links as supporting references.
This guideline was put in place when it was gradually realized that it isn't uncommon for people to post links for which one or more of these were factors:
They misinterpreted or misunderstood the link.
The link was not really germane to the current topic.
The link was very long or had many webpages and it wasn't clear which part of the link they were referring to.
The Moderator Guidelines don't suggest a specific period to wait for a participant to transition to a moderator role, but waiting three days since the last post has become traditional here. My last post as part of the discussion was two days ago, so assuming I don't post as a participant again, tomorrow I will transition to the moderator role in this thread where I plan to issue short but increasingly longer temporary suspensions to those who persistently or purposefully flout Forum Guidelines.
No one said, "'Written evidence' is not evidence." I'm not sure what I said that made you think I was saying that. Why would anyone say that?
That's not to say that writings can't be evidence. Of course they can be. But writings are not automatically evidence. They must be validated as evidence first.
Sure, you want to look at as much information as possible to assess the accuracy of what is written but it is still evidence. ... I would say that everything that is written that is intended to be understood as non-fiction is evidence. That does not exclude the conclusion that it is completely or partially fabricated.
I was hoping to avoid using a definition of evidence where both the genuine and the fabricated are called evidence. This would be a very difficult way to talk about evidence, and it doesn't get you any closer to validating your claims that some accounts in the Bible are true, like that Jesus was real and was resurrected.
It is much better to reserve the word evidence for something that's been validated, and to not use the word evidence for things that haven't been validated. They should be referred to more neutrally by calling them data or information or writings or documents or notes or artifacts or art. Only when validated and placed in a cross-correlative framework would they become evidence. If we use the word evidence in this way then we can see that the Bible is not evidence of miracles or prophecies or resurrections or messiahs buzzing around Jerusalem and witnessed by 500.
I wrote about use of the board software once before, but it evidently bears repeating that when replying if you click on "Peek Mode" then you'll be able to copy-n-paste the original markup into your post. If you use this feature you'll be less likely to become misinterpret what you read, as is perhaps what happened here when the quotation lost it's formatting:
Percy writes:
There are numerous reasons to know that . Here is Mark 13:14.________________________________________ 14 “When you see ‘the abomination that causes desolation’ standing where it does not belong—let the reader understand—then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. ________________________________________
...
It was you that brought that passage up...
Fixing this:
Percy writes:
There are numerous reasons to know that . Here is Mark 13:14.
quote:14 “When you see ‘the abomination that causes desolation’ standing where it does not belong—let the reader understand—then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.
...
It was you that brought that passage up...
No, it wasn't me who brought that passage up. The words that you quote as mine are actually yours from your Message 1352. It was you who brought that passage up, and then your terrible quoting in subsequent posts that led you to become so confused you thought I said them.
I think we'd both like to continue the discussion, but we can't get anywhere while you're doing things like responding to your own words as if I'd said them. If you're real busy and are rushing through your replies then please just take your time. I'm in no rush. I'd like to see you take another stab at a reply where you patiently interpret each passage you read, and where you take advantage of the board software to make your responses easy to follow.
Oh, about your suggestion that the mountains are the ones to the east of the Dead Sea, look at the region around the Dead Sea, including Jerusalem, using Google Satellite View. This will give you a good idea of where the bigger mountains really are, which is all around Jerusalem, and also west of the Dead Sea well south of Jerusalem (where the mountains are harder to discern because of the light coloring). The Masada region is very rugged. And the places where scrolls from that period have been found are all on the west side of the Dead Sea (mostly near Quamran at the northwestern tip of the Dead Sea), not the east.
There are mountainous areas to the east of the Dead Sea, but looking at a map, in the time of Jesus it was the western side of the Dead Sea that was in Judea. The eastern side was in other countries, Perea and Nabatea:
The evidence (i.e., facts) tells us that Jerusalem is already in the mountains, and this suggests that by mountains Jesus was most likely saying to take refuge in the mountainous regions outside Jerusalem, and perhaps in mountainous strongholds like Masada, although of course in 30 AD it was not in Jewish hands. That didn't happen until much later.
It isn't about being a decent person. It is about being a loving person and specifically one who is prepared to love sacrificially. The thing about Christianity is for one thing it should cause one to realize that the ability to love is a gift from God and it isn't just because you're a great guy. It helps keep you humble. Also it makes one grateful for the gift of life itself. Also through that knowledge and prayer it provides a path to being a more loving, humble, kinder and forgiving person than you would have been otherwise.
Data from the Federal Bureau of Prisons tells us that atheists commit crimes at much lower rates than the general population, of whom 63% are Christian. So much for your "being a loving person...prepared to love sacrificially" being transformative or even true.
I understand that you're by yourself in this and it feels like people just don't understand and that that's difficult, but getting up on your pontifical high horse isn't going to help.
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