Posted on 08/16/2004 12:16:13 PM PDT by Mr. Silverback
> Smith was a huckster who gained a lot of material benefit from his lies...
Had the Mormons taken over, the tale would be different, would it not? If, say, 500 years from now Mormons dominate the planet, what are the chances that your current view woudl hold sway? It doesn't NOW among Mormons...
> and unlike the bible, the BoM has been thouroughly discredited by modern archaeology.
Half true. The Bible, especially the OT (and especially especially Genesis), has been thoroughly discredited by archeology, geology, paleontology, astronomy...
> Compare that to the Apostles! They preached an empty tomb to the people of Jerusalem, one which they could go see.
Ummm... can I assume that you can see how silly that sounds? "Look! The tomb is empty! That's proof of XYZ!"
> The religious leadership was unable to rebutt their claims
Well, of course. Can you rebut the calim that God was sitting in my car yesterday? Does not the fact that my car is now empty PROVE to you that God was in it yesterday?
> There is no record that any of them ever benefited materially from their claims, just the opposite.
Amazing, since Christians controlled the documentation in following centuries. Those few documents that have come out that dispute some of the NT have been labelled as "heretical," and certainly vast numbers of other documents have gone to the fires.
Imagine if the New York Times was the only record of the Clinton years...
> A good skeptic also questions whether or not we know all there is to know--
About liars and crackpots.
> If they believed what they said, then they are not lying.
True, and it would not negate the possibility of lies.
> We cannot have a conversation if we cannot agree on the language that is available to us.
Apparently not, as you seem to believe that if someone tells a lie, and someone else believes it, then it is no longer a lie. What the hell is it then?
> by all means you have every right to be as stupid as you want to be.
I must bow to your masterful debating style. Such magnificent use of logic and rhetoric! How can anyone be anything but convinced?
Yes. That too. However, one of the assumptions we have to agree on is the definition of a liar. A liar is one who says something false or gives a false impression, and knows it to be false or misleading at the time that he says it.
That's not what I said at all. I said that a person that says something that is untrue, believing it to be true, is not a liar. I was given many Calculus problems to solve in both high school and college. I got many of them wrong, but I believed my answer to be correct when I gave it. The teachers never accused me of being a liar for it, and they would have been wrong and stupid to do so.
Your straw men are becoming tiresome. Do you really want to continue the discussion about logical arguments concerning faith in Jesus?
> That's not what I said at all. I said that a person that says something that is untrue, believing it to be true, is not a liar.
But if the person who initially told him that untruth *knew* it to be untrue, then it's still a lie. It doesn;t make the second person a liar, just wrong... but that first person IS a liar.
So, obviously, the Apostles could well have believed everything they said, and it could still have been a pack of lies. Someone *else* told them things, you see, and performed apparent miracles...
I suggest you read the post I was responding to before screaming "strawman." The claim was made that an empty tomb was proof of something.
> Do you really want to continue the discussion about logical arguments concerning faith in Jesus?
The discussion is broader than just one character from fable, but the reasonableness of faith in general. But this grows tiresome, I've said my piece, and I've other things to do.
Another straw man. You are answering an argument that I did not make. At this point, all I said is that they were not liars. That, by itself, does not lead one to believe that what they said was the truth. If the apostles were the eyewitnesses, by the way, then the option is not available to us that they believed what they did because someone else told them about it.
I did read the other post about the empty tomb, and you are changing the argument. It was not just that the tomb was empty--but that someone had been buried there first, under particular conditions, and then disappeared. We haven't examined the possible explanations for that--because there are several--but the argument wasn't "Empty tomb=Savior" and you know it.
I also see that you do not want to continue this discussion. May we both be the better for the discussion we did have.
Sometimes, the best argument against stubborn stupidity is scorn.
That is a subjective truth. Subjectively, I think strawberry is the best. Tomorrow, it will be fudge swirl depending on my mood - maybe something else.. lol.
Nope. The truth would still be the truth.
The Bible, especially the OT (and especially especially Genesis), has been thoroughly discredited by archeology, geology, paleontology, astronomy...
On the contrary, the Bible has been richly confirmed by archaeology over and over again, and anyone who says otherwise is either grossly ignorant or lying. You may want to read up on Sir William Ramsey as just one example of a man who was convinced of the Bible because of what he discovered in the field. On the geo/paelontology front, atheistic evolution is running into more far more problems than a Bibilical worldview. I'm curious as to how you think astronomy has disproved the Bible.
Ummm... can I assume that you can see how silly that sounds? "Look! The tomb is empty! That's proof of XYZ!"
I have yet to find a single coherant explanation for the fact of the empty tomb--a fact that even skeptical Biblical scholars agree on. Every suggest explanation falls short on one point or another, usually assuming that the disciples and Apostles of Jesus had a superhuman faith in something that they knew to be false.
If you assume that the Apostles stole the body, you have to explain their motives for willingly dying for a belief that they knew to be false. Nor could a single person have done the job; aside from the fact that the tomb was under guard, Jewish tombs required many strong men working together to roll back the stone because of the way that they were constructed. If you assume that the body was still there, you have to explain why the Jewish and Roman authorities didn't trot it out.
You also have to explain how dozens or even hundreds of people all came to attest, at risk of their lives, that they had personally seen Christ walking around and having long discussions with them after His death. Hallucinations simply don't work that way; when you have multiple attesting witnesses to an event, it's up to the skeptic to disprove that the event took place and offer an alternative explanation--not just a lot of "what ifs" and "maybes," but a solid explanation that takes all of the available data into account better than the original explanation.
Can you rebut the calim that God was sitting in my car yesterday?
Do you have multiple witnesses to this event, including hostile witnesses? If not, then your argument is pretty shot down to begin with--nobody disputes that Jesus lived, that He was a marvelous teacher, and that He was crucified, and the Jewish Talmud attests to His miracles. Many people attested to His Resurrection as well, and the authorities of the time weren't able to create an effective counter-argument to explain that event away; they had to rely on sheer persecution instead (which, ironically, only served to prove the sincerity of the witnesses).
Amazing, since Christians controlled the documentation in following centuries.
Weren't you the one who just insinuated that a lack of evidence isn't evidence? Why then are you forced to fall back on unsubstantiated conspiracy theories to disprove the basic historocity of Jesus and His disciples?
Those few documents that have come out that dispute some of the NT have been labelled as "heretical,"
True, but the only thing that should concern us is the historocity of those documents, not their initial reception. Do your own homework, and you'll find that the Gospel accounts pass all of the standard historical tests: They don't contain anachronisms, they have incidental details that match with what we know about the period from other documents and archaeology, etc. The heretical writings that you cite fail these tests, betraying the thoughts, language, and culture of later centuries.
Heck, the documents that most skeptics like to cite, the Gnostic gospels, aren't really so much actual gospel accounts (biographys) as commentaries and mystical conjectures that are clearly Helenist, rather than Jewish, in their worldview and are inaccurate in their historical details. Don't take my word for it. Do your own homework--which does not mean unskeptically believing the skeptics.
Imagine if the New York Times was the only record of the Clinton years...
Sure, there'd be spin, but the details that he was the 42nd President, the various scandals (Whitewater, Monica, etc.), that he was impeached for lying under oath, and so on would all be there, would they not?
What you're doing is the equivalent of declaring that because there might be spin about him, Clinton was never actually President, and that his entire Presidency was invented by the writers of the NYT.
> the Bible has been richly confirmed by archaeology over and over again,
Only in the mundane matters, in much the same way that archeologists a thousand years from now might determine that there *really* *was* a city called New York, but despite their best efforts, they can't find real evidence of Spiderman.
> On the geo/paelontology front, atheistic evolution is running into more far more problems than a Bibilical worldview.
Ah, here's an interesting question. What you just said was a pretty blatant untruth, but the question is... was it a lie on your part, or do you honestly believe that the massive and increasing bulk of evidence pointing towards evolution is somehow negated by the dwindling and increasingly looney nonsense that Creationsists spout?
> I'm curious as to how you think astronomy has disproved the Bible.
Bible: Creation in six days, about 6,000 years ago
Astronomy: creation about 20,000,000,000 years ago, more or less.
Satellite launch companies and NASA exploratory probes regualrly use the lessons of astronomy. N \obody profitably uses the lessons of Biblical cosmology for anything but selling books.
> I have yet to find a single coherant explanation for the fact of the empty tomb
It was empty to begin with; they made it up. All the supportign documenhtation is stuff that THEY wrote.
> You also have to explain how dozens or even hundreds of people all came to attest, at risk of their lives, that they had personally seen Christ walking around and having long discussions with them after His death.
According to whom?
>> Can you rebut the calim that God was sitting in my car yesterday?
> Do you have multiple witnesses to this event, including hostile witnesses?
Yes I do. They are all now converts to Orionblamblamism, except for the heretics and morons. There have been attempts to suppress them, but their suffering only goes to show jsut how true a statement it is that God was in my car yesterday. I mean, how can you *possibly* counter the personal testimony of Rodderick Yamtamisbiddle?
Your argueing againt Orionblamblamism only goes to show that you are under the sway of the Dark One... Sauronokerry. Repent now, sinner!
SIX?
Sure. For example, if a person sincerely believes that they are a loser, they begin to subconciously sabotage their lives and become losers. I have seen this manifest time and time again.
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