inconsistent Creationists

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AngelRho
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10 Aug 2012, 11:49 am

Oodain wrote:

AngelRho wrote:

Oodain wrote:

i think you misunderstood something,

he wasnt increasing the reliability of the source, he shined light on a distinction between primary and secondary sources.

the reliability of any one of those is disconnected from the distinction between primary and secondary.

Er, I am aware of that, which was why I wrote that first sentence in my response.

Oodain wrote:

no historical document will be worth much on its own, even with multiple sources one has to account for the culture and enviroment it was written in.

Well, of course, if you intend to extrapolate the intended meaning of the text for as close to an accurate interpretation of it. And that's the thing about the Bible. You're trying to take the entire bound volume as a single source document, and it isn't. All four gospels differ in perspective and in purpose. Where one might be vague, another clarifies. Where information is missing in one, it is continued in another. The 3 Synoptics are rich in information about what Jesus did and said; John is written as if he assumes you know all of this already and goes deeper into what Jesus taught about theology. Probably every evangelical Christian who has spent any time at all in church can quote the KJV John 3:16. Or if you have a lot of Jehovah's Witnesses in your area, John 1:1 is a good one to have handy--it's just a good one to know anyway: "In the beginning was the Word; and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." I'd tell any new convert wanting to dive into the Bible that John is probably the best place to start. The epistles of Peter and John are pretty light reading, but I'd read Paul's later writings before getting into the earlier stuff. For some odd reason, the preacher I grew up listening to went verse-by-verse out of James every year it seemed like, so I grin and bear it because of long-standing negative associations. It's still good stuff, though.

But, I mean, the point is the NT is not "A" historical document but a collection of them. The environment and culture doesn't really seem to adversely affect them although, obviously, it affects the language and style of the writings. That doesn't make it untrue, though.

in essence you have to look sentence by sentence in relation to other historical documents and evidence which means that no amount of historical corroboration will lend credence to the book or passages themselves, only the singular fact you have examined.
point being that it still doesnt hold very well as anty form of argument or evidence.

This only works if the Greek New Testament is a singular work itself. However, it isn't. It is a collection of historical documents. So compare Matthew and Mark. Or Matthew and Luke. Is the theology of John consistent with biographical information and the words of Christ in the Synoptics? Yes? So what's the problem?

Or are we prejudiced against the sources to begin with and holding them to apparently higher standards than we hold unrelated sources that we DO accept?

Oodain
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10 Aug 2012, 12:24 pm

any historical document is limited by its scope and function,

an ideological political script from egypt hold no greater credibility if thats what your asking,

their tax records however have a different scope ad function and thus holds a different credibility.

in the case of mythological writing the credibility is rather low,
i dont give any more credence to christian mythology than i do the hindu mythology of vimanas.

that is not to say that there cant be historical corroboration for events that happen in them but to my knowledge, so far, all we have is corroboration of locations and major non mythical events,
so even when we find corroboration for say, the census, or a certain ruler, then it doesnt automatically give credence to the mythical claims laid forth.

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AngelRho
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10 Aug 2012, 1:43 pm

Oodain wrote:

Well, again, the same truth holds. You're prejudicially treating the gospels as a single document whereas were they considered separate accounts then they'd be viewed as corroborating evidence of each other. I mean, that's an unreasonable standard that no historical, past or present, could hold up. Why does the Bible take such a beating when other documents are given the benefit of a doubt?

There's no evidence that the gospels ARE myths. You can't just wish something out of existence just because you don't like it. And, honestly, what is it exactly about the gospels you don't want to believe?

And, too, the gospels don't characterize themselves as myth. Jesus talks about mountain-moving faith, but never once does he ever find it right and proper to conduct a destructive demonstration of superhuman strength and power. The crucifixion--if you actually read the gospels, it's strikingly anti-climactic, don't you think? The appearances to the disciples isn't very dramatic, either, except the disciples seeing what they thought was a dead man and trying to comprehend what they experienced. The ascension and parting words are about as brilliant as Bill and Ted's "Be excellent to each other." Yes, it's pretty amazing, but it isn't exactly epic.

It's certainly not Tolkien. It's not even Homer. It's anything but mythic, which lends some credence in the minds of many that what was recorded in the gospels actually happened.

enrico_dandolo
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10 Aug 2012, 1:46 pm

Actually, the only useful comparison is between John and the three others. The three sinoptic Gospels are often very similar/textually identical, and probably either copied from one another or from a common source. Practically, there are two sources, but it may be interesting to notice the differences between

Also, it is important to note that sources cannot prove that something impossible has happened. If it is impossible, one must try to understand why it was believed. This is what must be done when a source tells us of ordeals, "divine" astroligical signs, miracles and people coming back from the dead.

shrox
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10 Aug 2012, 1:55 pm

AngelRho wrote:

...There's no evidence that the gospels ARE myths. You can't just wish something out of existence just because you don't like it. And, honestly, what is it exactly about the gospels you don't want to believe?...

...It's certainly not Tolkien. It's not even Homer. It's anything but mythic, which lends some credence in the minds of many that what was recorded in the gospels actually happened.

Yes. It's a recollection of events.

AngelRho
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10 Aug 2012, 2:09 pm

enrico_dandolo wrote:

OK, but the fact that something actually happened is no guarantee anyone IS going to believe it. People used to believe that the sun, planets, and stars revolved around the earth. Did they start going around the sun just because Galileo looked through his telescope? Did people just start believing Galileo because he was right? (off-topic, but Galileo did have some credibility issues of his own; that, together with some of his personality traits didn't exactly ingratiate him to the higher-ups who could really have helped him the most)

Of course, people DO tend to more likely believe things that actually happened than things they know didn't. Obviously, a sticking point for the empiricist crowd is the fact that many things Jesus did can only best be explained as supernatural events. The fact that people who were there at the time FOUND them believable is a starting point for others to consider their testimony and make the same decisions.

Also, neither faith nor evidence "prove" anything. I just happen to believe the evidence makes a strong case in favor of those claims.

AngelRho
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10 Aug 2012, 2:12 pm

shrox wrote:

AngelRho wrote:

Yes. It's a recollection of events.

Oodain
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10 Aug 2012, 2:15 pm

AngelRho wrote:

Oodain wrote:

there is equally many corroborations about the vimanas if you want to look at it that way, that doesnt mean there actually was hundred meter wide mercury driven flying machines that could shoot lightning that levels mountains.

extrordinary claims require extrordinary evidence.

also you forget that the inherent bias of authors following a common doctrine also has t be considered, that is why you cannot simply reference one part of the bible with another, it is internally biased.

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enrico_dandolo
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10 Aug 2012, 2:19 pm

AngelRho wrote:

enrico_dandolo wrote:

People throughout the Middle Ages believed that saints did miracles and that God was giving them signs of events to come through astrological events. They all believed it. It does not tell us that it happened. As I said, reading historical sources is not evidence that something that cannot happened has happened.

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10 Aug 2012, 2:49 pm

enrico_dandolo wrote:

...People throughout the Middle Ages believed that saints did miracles and that God was giving them signs of events to come through astrological events. They all believed it. It does not tell us that it happened. As I said, reading historical sources is not evidence that something that cannot happened has happened.

The men Jesus chose as disciples were not people from the middle ages, most of them were professionals in jobs that required literacy. A far greater percentage of the 12 could read and write that a comparable random group of 12 people from their era.

Just these four here, the fishermen. Peter and Andrew, and James and John.

Fishing was a major international business.

They had their own prosperous fishing business, owned their own nets and boats, and had multiple employees who worked under them. (This is probably what allowed them to follow Jesus.)

The brothers changed the city their business was based out of in order to get a tax break.

The brothers probably spoke Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek, the language of the elite and educated.

The house of the Peter (the CEO) in Capernaum was unusually large. Not the house of a poor or illiterate man.

enrico_dandolo
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10 Aug 2012, 5:14 pm

What you said has nothing to do with anything.

1- I mentionned miracles in the Middle Ages because I am more knowledgeable about this period, not because people were more credulous then.
2- People in the Middle Ages were intelligent enough to dodge taxes and hire people. If anything, they were more so than in the Ancient Era.
3- Being litterate does not mean you will detect what is or isn't a miracle.
4- Many of the people who acknowledged miracles in the Middle Ages were litterate and educated, and they included rich merchants.
5- Any comparison between a modern CEO and any kind of ancient businessman is completely misleading. Commercial practices were extremely basic and not at all sophisticated in the Roman Empire, whereas they were very much closer to what we know by the end of the Middle Ages.

shrox
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10 Aug 2012, 6:54 pm

enrico_dandolo wrote:

It does. Others will see it.

By the way, you misspelled literate...twice.

enrico_dandolo
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10 Aug 2012, 10:44 pm

shrox wrote:

It does. Others will see it.

What will they see? And why would they see it?

shrox wrote:

By the way, you misspelled literate...twice.

Sorry. My first language is French, and where you write "literature" and "literate", we write "littérature" and "lettré", so I am often confused.

AngelRho wrote:

With the gospels, though, you have a source written within two or three decades of the events, and that is pretty uncommon from what I understand about ancient sources. All the gospels from what we can tell were not only written soon after the events they described, but they were rapidly copied and distributed among the major 1st century churches. We know this because the earliest SURVIVING manuscripts of different books date to the early 100s, and you have bound collections of them not long after that. And that's not to mention the copying accuracy among all the different manuscripts.

Missed this.

The time that can have elapsed without ruining completely credibility depends on the source. A carefully written chronicle, using written documents (which may or may not still exist), direct or other witnesses, and the chroniclers' own knowledge and memory, can be trusted to be somewhat accurate for the equivalent of a lifetime before redaction, depending on where it can be assumed the information comes from. However, this does not dispense it from source criticism. Some documents have very little descriptive value whatsoever, no matter when they were written, because they are to heavily biased, and should not be taken at face value (for example, panegyrics of cities or people).

I don't know which is the case with the Gospels, though. What is certain is that whatever happened would have been reinterpreted completely within days of the whole "resurrection" event.

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10 Aug 2012, 11:37 pm

I find it strange that anyone with Asperger's, and thus a logical thinker, could believe in creationism!

ruveyn
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11 Aug 2012, 7:21 am

Coastt wrote:

I find it strange that anyone with Asperger's, and thus a logical thinker, could believe in creationism!

Aspies may be literal minded but their is guarantee that they are logical and rational.

ruveyn

shrox
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11 Aug 2012, 1:32 pm

enrico_dandolo wrote:

...

shrox wrote:

By the way, you misspelled literate...twice.

Sorry. My first language is French, and where you write "literature" and "literate", we write "littérature" and "lettré", so I am often confused...

Forgive me friend, I thought you had a US education. Your excellent use of English makes me see Blue, White and Red. (He's French, he'll get it.)

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