Posted on 12/18/2004 6:48:25 AM PST by Kitten Festival
During this Christmas season and the aftermath of the election in which devout Christians played a large role, Jon Meacham, managing editor at Newsweek, writes an analysis of the birth of Christ. Not surprisingly, the article is seriously confused and flawed. It does not address the underlying assumptions that prejudice his interpretation of facts and his conclusions.
This critique of Meacham touches on complicated areas, like the (im)probability of miracles, which cannot be examined more thoroughly here, but it at least provides an exposé of Meacham’s prejudices.
His confusion and hidden assumptions can be clarified, as it were, in three syllogisms, which boil down to doubts about miracles and, more importantly, about the trustworthiness of the four Gospels, specifically about the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, which recount the Nativity of Christ. The doubts about miracles and the reliability of the texts are linked. If miracles are highly improbable, then all texts that assume miracles are highly unreliable. We tackle the unreliability of the Gospel texts first.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
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