This is a very good opportunity to refer to the work of
Gary Habermas, who did a comprehensive study demonstrating that most scholars accept the things I mentioned.
Why should I believe him? He is not really what could be called unbiased. Let me see corroboration of his results by an independent or even agnostic/atheist course and then we can talk.
I didn’t say most scholars accept the truth of the Resurrection. I said they recognize as historical fact that the disciples sincerely believed in it based on their experience. This in itself is highly significant.
So does every Christian in the long chain of almost 2000 years. How do you know? You hears it form someone else. How do they know? They heard it from someone else, etc. all the way back to the authors of the New Testament books (as well as those that didn't make it into the canon).
Of the four Gospels, only Matthew and John would have been "eyewitnesses" to a risen Jesus (not the Resurrection itself; that was not witnessed by anyone). Of those, Matthew basically copies most of Mark's account who was not a witness!
The Church cleverly (but inexplicably) placed Matthew's account first, while biblical scholarship places Mark's account first. Which begs the question, why would an "eyewitness" copy the work of a non-eyewitness!?! And then the account by John differs like night and day from the Mark's account. Can two eyewitness accounts, both supposedly guided by the Holy Spirit, differ that much? Makes you wonder if someone was napping...
For example Luke’s writings stands up to the strictest standards of accuracy as regards geographical detail, as well as details about particular people
How can that be when there are two Gospels of Luke, one short and one long? That fact itself throws sufficient down to dismiss such a claim. besides, what does your statement say about those biblical references that are geographically, or otherwise incorrect?
These things have been tested, for all the New Testament authors, by comparing them to the recordings of non Christian writers of the time.
Like the account of the Roman census and Herod's death, a gap of 4 years?...or Peter's reference to enduring persecutions when there were none? Makes you wander why would someone born in Bethlehem be called the Nazarene...
The error here is to establish certain claims as true in themselves—that they are true in an a priori sense.
You have more than an a priori belief when it comes to Genesis?!
Like the claim that no particular miracle could have really happened because miracles in general cannot happen.
When there are no other instances in all of human history of such events, chances are they are, especially since neither snakes nor donkeys have human brains and human vocal cords, or at least science has not been able to find any vestigial evidence of such organs in either snakes or donkeys.
Rather than saying, “I refuse to believe this because such a thing is impossible,” it’s much more rational to investigate particular events in question based on what actually happened during that time.
The problem is that some people come out with something (I.Ed. talking pink unicorns on Jupiter) and expect others to believe them! Not only that, they expect others to "justify' their doubt. If you think about it, it's the people who make make fantastic claims who should be providing some reasonable evidence to back up their fantastic claims, not the people who express doubt about them!
Facts can be established according to standards we all accept, and as more pieces are added to the puzzle the truth becomes more visible.
I agree. So what do you have to offer to explain why a major world religion depends on a "talking" snake?
Let’s boil this thing down to the essentials.
First—yes I depend on faith before reason in spiritual matters (and these two phenomena are distinct in a subjective sense; that is, as they are used within an academic context). But a priori reasoning is not the same as faith.
Now, back to our discussion. Standards of truth are used across the spectrum of academic disciplines. In science we use observation, measurement and repetition. In a courtroom we use evidence and rules. Knowledge theory uses particular rigorous standards of objectivity and logic. Historians have their version of assuring the validity of their own work. The common thread is woven from the concepts of objectivity, sense perception, accuracy and reliability. These are found in all standards of truth. Let’s call this set of standards T.
I have made an assertion to you. We’ll call the assertion p. The assertion is that particular events surrounding Jesus and his resurrection from death are accepted as true by mainstream scholars of history (and these scholars include a broad range, from believers to atheists), who use T to verify and validate their work.
You protest to me that p must false because it doesn’t meet your standards of verification, which we will call k. It is very clear that k is congruent with T above. Your protest is based on the fact that I have not presented clear evidence of k (or T) for p, all I’ve done is claim it exists.
The important thing here is that your protest is tantamount to admitting that if T for p is present, then you will accept p as true.
But there is another problem. It’s the same problem we see in courtrooms, where objective truth falls prey to the lawyer’s tongue. Lawyers are victims of their training, which teaches them that real truth doesn’t matter—what matters is whether you can manipulate language so that your language seems to represent truth. Appearance alone is sufficient, not the actual truth. And an attempt is made to justify this claim with the assumption that objective truth doesn’t exist. That’s right. Our old friend relativism. Relativism tells us that something can be true today but false tomorrow, depending on subjective volition.
As for our conversation, I’m convinced that when T validates p but p is contrary to your volition V, you will inject standards of relativism, which we will call R. But if I show you T for p, you throw R on top of T and claim T doesn’t exist.
So the difference between you and me is R. What you need to learn is that R doesn’t make things right—it makes them wrong. R brings chaos. It’s the worm in a once good apple. R is the nail that flattens your tire. The red light, the traffic jam, the lost wallet, the misplaced keys. The girlfriend who rejected you in high school, the jock who bullied you, the social group that ostracized you, the mother who gave you up for adoption. R is that impulse she doesn’t understand that drives Anita Dunne to follow Mao Tse Tung; the murderer of wisdom in the soul of Van Jones that shows him goodness when he looks evil in the face. It’s that which denies Obama and Hillary the same spirit of allegiance enjoyed between Palin and DeMint, instead making them mortal enemies. R is the leftist troll on an otherwise perfectly good conservative website. It’s a blanket of darkness covering the light—like a cloud of death. R is the initial cancer cell. R is the master of Charles Manson, Bill Ayers and Joseph Stalin. It whispers into the ear of the liberal telling him he’s tilling soil, when in truth he’s digging his own grave.
Relativism excludes the leftist, ultimately, from rational discourse. So let’s exclude relativism from our discourse.
The starting point now is that you agree if I show you that universal truth standards have been met, you will agree with me that my original assertion p is factual.