Ö÷²¥´óÐã

I read the Times article with great sadness - We can only hope that Jonathan will re-open his mind to the truth of Scripture.

As someone has said,"If God seems far away - guess who moved?" God will still be there when Jonathan returns, as one day he surely will.

Good man, Jonathan. Nice bloke, intelligent bloke, trained scientist (cytogenetics). There are a lot of Christians that I have always held in deep respect, and Jonathan Edwards was one of them. Now I hold him in even higher respect.

It's not easy, particularly in the first few months/years, to withstand the constant pulls to rejoin the fold. In many ways, returning to Christianity is an easy option. But one of the things Christianity teaches is the value of Truth, and when Christianity itself doesn't pass that test, it's time to move beyond.

[I hope Steve Chalke can take heart from this to pluck up similar courage ;-) . There are plenty of us post-Christian atheists around, and we know what it feels like.]

Will I have to question the impartiality here.

It appears that anyone with a beef against bible believing Christianity only has to drop you a line and "wham" up it goes on your blog. eg recent postings from humanist groups.

This *is* a news story and deserves to be here, but you gave me short shrift last week when I asked you to put up a piece about 100s of young Christians going to sweep the streets in Belfast as an act of love.

It appears any story which demeans faith is in and any story which shows it in a positive light it is out.

If readers disagree you could do your own tally for the past month (or any month) on this blog and see how many entries fall into each category.

;-)

PB

pb
There are over 3 hours of religious propaganda on Radio Ulster alone EVERY Sunday. I don'r remember William ruling any comments here off-topic so post what you like - why not try your views on transubstansiation and we'll see how much interest it generates?

Pb, wise up. Do you get the idea of blogging? Bloggers write about what interests them. Will's blog is realy popular partly because he's writing and picking what he writes about. From what I can tell he's written a few posts here about Summer Madness and he's in a mood to discuss floods and punishment at then minute! Big deal. That's what bloggers do. Is it possible, pb, that you're just a teeny-weeeny bit paranoid??

hey pb, you can always post in comments. (Will sometimes lifts a comment and makes it a main story and hat tips the commenter). I've sent things to Will a couple of times and he wrote about one story and didn't write about the other. I'm not taking offence! Even if he hadn't written about the other story. Remember, he wants to write about ideas and issues and news stories, etc, and I don't know if that story you mentioned would generate much discussion here. Who knows? I think youre overreacting and taking personal offence at this because will disn't run a story idea you suggested. As for the faith business, there are lots of stories here that are about faith. The Bart campolo discussion is intriguing I think and the discussion about the bishop on floods and judgment is interesting. Neither attacks faith in god, instead they are about what christian faith should say about these sort of things. Anyway, that's my view.

hey you guys, read my post again, my comments stand as fact.

you can do the maths yourself. two columns please...

It is not simply a crack at Will, it is statement about virtually all content on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã.

As a rule of thumb, the only stories that get used in SS are those critical of faith, never really showing what positive is being done.

If you want to prove me wrong, post me a few examples.

This is not a gripe about one press measly press release, I have been reading this blog quite a while now.

Andrew Marr, the Times and the Daily Mail seem to be on my side though;-

PB

PB

This is Will's blog and as such can post on any subject he likes-it is not a news blog. There are subjects that I do not have an interest in and therefore do not comment.

If you don't like it, then go to a 'Bible-believing' blog/site and agree with everything that is being said.

Also if Bible-believers did not utter such stupid things then they would not be the subject of so much talk!and yu are such a paranoid lot!

PB- As I've explained to you before (particularly on the Ian Paisley thread a while ago), the things that provoke debate and discussion are, by definition, news worth blogging and broadcasting. It sounds to me like you don't want to see any controversy about religious issues at all.

Yes John

but I also find it jolly hilarious that all the controversy on SS and Will and Testament without exception puts bible believers on the defensive.

And while we are at it, how come you slag off the Ö÷²¥´óÐã's left liberal bias on your own wesbite and then attack me when I say the same thing on this website?

My brain hurts trying to understand this John!

;-)

PB

So Jonathan Edwards has lost his faith. As a Christian, and one for rooted for Jonathan as a fellow believer, I am natuarally saddened. Nevertheless, let's not get this out of proportion. He is not going to be the only Christian to lose their faith in coming years. Conversley, there have always been and will continue to be many agnostics and atheists who will come to faith. Few of the latter will have the celebrity status of Jonathan Edwards, but that does not diminish the importance of each conversion one whit. Nor is Jonathan's "de-conversion" any more important than any other individual's loss of faith. I think it was CS Lewis who said that there are only two kinds of people in the world: those who are on a journey towards God, and those who are on a journey away from Him. Jonathan's own journey is not over yet, and neither is that of any of us.

Roger, you are probably correct, but it's good to see that Jonathan is at least moving in the right direction, and I very much hope that he is an example and inspiration to others. When I moved beyond Christianity, initially I was very apprehensive. But once I took the plunge, it was great, and continues to be great.

Like Jonathan (I hope), I don't regret having been a Christian - I do feel a bit silly occasionally at having believed it all for so long. I think the "standard" Christian "Quiet Time", where you're encouraged to use commentaries and guides to selected texts, rather than do your own research, compare, contrast, think, etc. is part of the reason why many more Christians don't realise that the bible is a completely human creation, and that their commentaries have been crafted specifically to prevent those inconvenient passages like 1 Samuel 15 from disrupting a theology that can only claim biblical justification with a great degree of hindsight, and could probably just as easily claim Moby Dick as its holy book, and not have to change anything else.

Has Jonathan done any other interviews lately?

Amenhotep, your message suggests to me that before chucking it in you did not really spend much time, from a position of moderate scepticism, adequately consider the arguments in favour of Christianity. Sadly that is a true of a lot of people who grow up in sheltered Christian environments and who are derailed by arguments against Christianity that they had not been expecting or were not prepared for. Under these circumstances an "encounter" with the likes of Chistopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins can be unsettling to say the least. When they fire the pebbles they have collected at Sunday School, needless to say little impact is made. The result of that can be that they allow themselves to be too quickly overawed by arguments which might not be quite so solid as they might seem. Sadly, a lot of young people in our churches are happy enough to drift with the evangelical tide, going from one spiritual high to another, their minds bathed in sickly-sweet sentimental, music- driven(me-)Worship. They are not given and neither do they demand anything which will engage them intellectually, and when they get into conversation with non or post-Christians at university they are actually bowled over to "find" that all the "intellect" is on the side of the opposition. It is therefore not long before they find themselves in the ranks of the opposition.

Roger, that is a rather unfair comment, and suggests to me that you haven't really given much thought to these matters, other than superficially poking your head out of the bunny-hole, to scamper back down when something approaches. Many people are happy to paddle along and be kept between the hedges of the strait and narrow by the growls of their elders and betters, being shepherded along by tales of "former atheists" like McGrath (who is actually more of a "former teenager") or C.S. Lewis or John Newton.

Such people don't want you to find out about the flaws and errors in the bible (OT & NT), and they certainly don't want you to read 1 Samuel 15 or anything like that - oh no - which would paint their made-up god as a genocidal wishy-washy mistake-prone idiot.

They don't want you to read all the gospels in parallel - heavens, no! Or to appreciate that people resurrected all the time in C1CE - even Jesus himself was thought to be a resurrected prophet - Herod Antipas even (apparently) thought he was John the Baptist with his head stuck back on! Credulous times call for us to exercise a bit more respect for the ancient texts and some critical thinking.

Jonathan has made the right call, as have many others before him, and as will many others after. They mature past the faith position, but those who are still stuck in the arrested state of "faith" (which is not a virtue) cannot comprehend it, so resort to the sorts of "rationalisation" that your post very clearly evidences. Don't worry about it - I used to do the same thing myself, and I used to argue very strongly against atheism (but never for creationism of course - that's just rubbish).

The interesting thing (from my own perspective) is that it was NOT the arguments of atheists that convinced me that there was no god, and that Jesus of Nazareth was no Christ, but merely a man. It was reading the bible, becoming more familiar with it, and immersing myself in the actual landscape that Jesus would have been familiar with. Paddling in the Sea of Galilee. Kicking around Nazareth. Wandering the streets of Jerusalem. Clambering up the Mount of Olives. Christianity is inside. There is no god imposing it from outside - it is a purely human construction.

That's what Jonathan and others (myself included) have realised - often *against* our initial wishes. But when you stick your head above the fog, the air is marvellously clear and sweet. At the moment, all I would encourage you to do is read your bible. Read the gospels together, not separately. And in the back of your mind, imagine the small group of grieving family members who came to a temporary tomb on a Sunday morning, before the women, to take the body back to Galilee for a proper burial, and who disappeared, with the body itself, from the pages of history.

The rest, they say, is basic human psychology.

-A

I'm sorry if you found my comment unfair. Needless to say, I found yours very unfair indeed. In fact I have given a great deal of thought to these matters. I wonder what it was in my post that made you think otherwise. Contrary to what you have assumed, I have not shut myself into a so calld "bunny-hole" (How offensive can you get!). It may well be that many Christians never raise their heads above the parapet. In fact that was pecisely the point that I was making in my last message. But when they do, it is not inevitable that they lose their faith. If they do lose it at the firt hint of something approaching that s a sadder reflection on their "faith" than it is on the object of it.

"Such people don't want you to find out about the flaws and errors in the bible (OT & NT), and they certainly don't want you to read 1 Samuel 15 or anything like that - oh no - which would paint their made-up god as a genocidal wishy-washy mistake-prone idiot."

There is something so insufferably cocky in the tone of "ex-Christians" when they reflect on the poor sods who haven't seen the light yet. (It's reminiscent of the tone of may an ex-smoker ranting about the idiots who persist in poisoning the air whn all the evidence shows the wreckage the are wreaking on their bodies). There is a smugness that I have rarely come across in the most ardent fundamentalist.

How sad it is (wouldn't you say?) that so many prominent and not so prominent Christians continue(d) to read the Bible into adulthood and somehow fail to see how decisive the supposed errors and flaws you had the perspicacity to find really were. How tragic that they never matured enough to see the obvious "truth" re the so-called resurrection, namely that Jesus' followers privately removed the body o Jesus to give it a more fitting burial! Of course (as one would expect) they proceeded to put about the story that he had risen, even though there was precious lttle in their sacred writings to indiate that that was what they should do.

Wouldn't we all be better off if men and women like Milton, Shakespeare Dostoyevski, Tolstoi, Wilberforce, Florence Nightingale, Dietrich Bonhöffer, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, had realised as you did that there was really nothing in it after all. But then what would you expect of such people? After all, they were not in a position to find the errors that we, enlightened souls that we are, have been able to find. Their education was probably not up to the task (as ours is) of equipping them to see them.

Some people (like your worthy self and Jonathan Edwards) grow out of the Christian faith. Others, like CS Lewis, John Newton, Augustine, grow and mature INTO the Christian faith and many others (poor benighted creatures) grow with and through the Christian faith.

Roger,

OK, perhaps we're being a bit unfair to each other here, but maybe you are working towards an understanding of why people *do* move away from Christianity. It is not backsliding. It is moving beyond. There is nothing "sad" about it, contra your post #13. I would say it's a good thing. I don't regret any of my time as a Christian - I learnt a lot, and got to know a lot of nice people, who remain my friends. Some people just outgrow it, and what many Christians don't understand is that the fault lies, not in the post-Christian, but in the supposed arguments *for* Christianity.

Of course, some people (like the ones you mention) are happy to stay within Christianity, and make the necessary mental adjustments to do that. None of which makes it True (or Untrue, for that matter). None of which makes them clever or stupid. Just people. People like religions.

But one thing that I think you *do* need to acknowledge is that the arguments *for* Christianity are exactly like the arguments for any other religion, which makes them very weak indeed.

Why are you "sad" when someone like Jonathan Edwards (or me) "deconverts"? Why are you "happy" when an atheist "converts"? Is it just that you're losing someone from your community in the first instance, and gaining someone in the second? Or is it deeper than that?

ATB,
-A

ATB,

OK, now I think we can change the tone of our respective messages. I trust you weren't offended at my sarcasm.

The preposition "beyond" as opposed to just "away from" is questionable. Undoubtedly that is how it feels from your point of view. If Christianity is true (which I believe it to be on what I think are very solid grounds) then you cannot move beyond it. You cannot move beyond the truth. Of course, I realise I am begging the question here. But as I say, Christian belief is warranted, and it is not only backwoods red-neck fundamentalists who think so.

This is not the time or the place to go into the arguments, but I would like to challenge you on the resurrection, by which the Christian faith stands or falls (as you yourself seem to realise). The argument that the body of Jesus was secretly buried somewhere other than in Joseph's tomb just does not hold any water. That fails completely to explain the total transformation that the disciples experienced. They did not expect Jesus to rise again. They knew as well as you or I do that dead people stay dead, which is why Thomas was sceptical and demanded evidence. They had no reason to put about the news that Jesus had risen from the dead. There was nothing in their Scriptures or in their mindset to warrant such tactics, and there was nothing to be gained by doing it. They were dejected and defeated; the bottom had fallen out of their world. And yet 40 days later they were preaching the resurrection of Jesus in public. Contrary to what you might actually believe, NT scholars (even the sceptical ones) nearly all agree that something earth-shattering must have happened to these people. Some people put it down to hallucinations, to be sure, but all the gospels (whatever the minor discrepancies) all agree that Jesus' appearances after the resurrection were physical (if as you say you have read all the gospels you'll be aware of that). People at the time knew what ghosts and hallucinations were (at one point they thought Jesus was a ghost), and they knew the difference between seeing a ghost and seeing the real person. Jesus put their minds at rest on that score when he said "a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have". They just weren't getting it into heir heads that he was live again.

As for the idea that the whole story was a legend invented by the disciples. Again you have to explain why they would do that, given the state of mind that they were in after he died, not to mention a host of other thing that are inexplicable on such a premise.

Invented by the Church in the 2nd century and then backdated to make it seem that the documents were older? Again, for all sorts of reasons this view is untenable. The gospel documents have been shown to have been composed before the year 90AD, which makes the growth of such legends very implausible. Besides, given the status that Peter later acquired there is no way he would have been presented in such a negative light.

I strongly recommend that you engage with the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. If it can be shown to be the most plausible explanation for what happened during that first Easter, then everything else follows suit. The implications are huge, and the stakes are high, of course. If true, it makes the Christian gospel true and every alternative paradigm false, with all that that means in terms of who we are, who God is and what is in store for us all.

Hi Roger,

No, I wasn't *really* offended, but you're engaging in constructive debate, so I think you deserve a proper response ;-)

I think you are absolutely right to focus on the resurrection as the key to the whole malarkey - Paul himself notes as much in 1Cor15:12&ff. I think you will agree that Paul's testimony of the resurrection of Jesus is not terribly convincing here - he does not offer an argument so much as an impassioned polemic. Moreover, it's not *entirely* clear exactly what type of "resurrection" he's referring to.

Paul himself does claim to have been a witness to the resurrected Jesus, but his "Road to Damascus" story is more of the heavenly visitiation type that religious characters of all religions get on a regular (and monotonous) basis, so I'm not sure we can attach too much significance to that.

As to the accounts of the actual resurrection, they are of course preceded by the Crucifixion stories, and the gospel accounts do not tally (a fact noted by Augustine and everyone else since). This has been put down to the "different viewpoint" notion, which is clearly not tenable, as the synoptic gospels clearly share a common documentary source (or set of sources). They were not witness accounts.

Robin Lane Fox actually argues that John probably *was* an eyewitness account, but written (as is commonly accepted) many decades after the death of Jesus. But John is even more divergent from the others, and is much more theological in tone, indeed propagandist (self-admittedly).

I'll leave you to read them yourself, but it's important to bear in mind that when Jesus was preaching, there were people running around claiming that he was John the Baptist or Elijah or whoever, raised from the dead - we are dealing with people who could get very worked up and enthused about something that was clearly nonsense. Matthew also has tombs opening in Jerusalem on the resurrection, and the dead walking the streets! This is totally unevidenced elsewhere, and is very obviously a lot of nonsense.

My view is that when the disciples found that the temporary tomb was empty (which was the original plan anyway - the body was to be moved after the Sabbath), they jumped to a self-reinforcing conclusion - a conclusion that was, of course wrong. This is not unusual, and we see the same sort of thing happening nowadays with the formation of cults. Anyone who didn't believe simply went back to Judaism or whatever. The ones who did believe entered a self-reinforcing religious spiral that caught on, just like Islam would catch on several centuries later. It's basic human psychology, and not at all inexplicable (although still remarkable, I'll grant you). It certainly did not require a *real* resurrection for it to happen.

The post-resurrection appearances are hopelessly at variance across the gospels, and all have a "ghost story" quality - it is clear that they are all based on hearsay. Just read them.

My view of the family of Jesus (who are known to have disapproved of what he was up to) taking the body back to Galilee is speculation, but it is based on the gospels themselves, and indeed common practice at the time. We know that Jesus had another group of "followers" (or associates) that were unknown to the disciples - the water-carrier, the man with the donkey, the Upper Room owner, and (I would suggest) "Moses" and "Elijah". In fact, I think it's very likely that the reason he was in Gethsemane that night was to hook up with these dudes. But it *is* speculation.

The young man at the tomb (remember him - he later changed into an angel and 2 angels!) told the women quite plainly that he was going before them into Galilee. They seem to have misinterpreted him, as suggesting that he was going *alive*, when in fact it was a burial party (who were no fans of these associates he had either picked up in Jerusalem or Capernaum).

Luke, in fact, gets the whole thing hopelessly wrong, and instead of them being told to go to Galilee, he has them stay in Jerusalem! (This is of course to help link in to the Pentecost story etc). It's an interesting one to compare to the others.

So, basically, we have a mishmash of stories that have been corrupted to a state where we cannot take any of them at face value. We know that Christianity took quite a while to take off - plenty of time for old men's memories to get fuzzy; plenty of time for legends to gather momentum.

One thing it doesn't need is a god to explain it. But it remains a great story (people love telling stories), and that is how it became attractive.

Hope that helps!
ATB,
-A

ATM,

These discrepancies are not so decisive as they might seem, and they certainly do not diminish the significance and reality of the main event. It would have been damning if one account had had Jesus buried in one place, and another account in another place. But the discrepancies that we find are actually peripheral. NT Wright tells the story of Wittgenstein delivering a lecture in Oxford. Among the attendees there were some of the cleverest philosophers and keenest intellects in the world (Professor Ayer, Bertrand Russell among others). At one point Wittgenstein took a poker from the fireplace in the room and started blandishing it in front of everyone. Absolutely present everyone remembered this incident, but in their accounts of it there were numerous discrepancies as regards the peripheral details. But there was no disagreement about what Wittgenstein actually did. Even apart from considerations like "redaction criticism", the same could be said of these discrepancies in the resurrection accounts in the four gospels. But redaction criticism does actually shed light on some of the reasons for the discrepancies. Luke was indeed more focus on events in and around Jerusalem. In the second part of his History (Acts), he does indeed (you are quite right) have the disciples meeting in the temple. But that does not mean that the post-mortem appearances that he chose to omit did not happen. And likewise for the other evangelists. All it means is that his theological purpose, embedded in the literary structure, was better served by his homing in on certain events to the exclusion of others.

It is true that Jesus' brother James was initially opposed to Jesus. He did not believe he was who he claimed to be. What is interesting though is that he was one of the people that Jesus was said by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 to have appeared to. And we know from Josephus that he was stoned to death at the instigation of the Sanhedrin as a Christian martyr (tho' needless to say Josephus does not refer to him explicitly as a Christian martyr). That fact makes nonsense of the claim that the family of Jesus secretly removed his body from the "temporary" tomb and buried him in Galilee. James might have been sceptical right up to the time of the crucifixion, but he was converted. His conversion to the faith of the apostles is inexplicable if he actually knew all along that he and the rest of the family had actually hidden the body somewhere in Galilee.

As for Matthew's account of other resurrections, that could well be apocalyptic projection to the end times, to reinforce the theological connection between Christ's physical resurrection and the physical resurrections that will result from his. Again, redaction criticism can be invoked here. The theological point that Jesus' resurrection represented a paradigm shift for 1st century Palestinian and Hellenistic (not to mention Roman) society is of course central to Paul's teaching on the matter as well: the fact that Jesus resurrection was not an isolated historical event, but was ALSO a sign of what God had thereby already begun to do for the whole of creation. This could have been in Matthew's mind in his relating these events.

I'm afraid that nothing you have said casts the slightest doubt on the reasonableness of the bodily resurrection of Jesus as the best possible explanation for the events of the first Easter. Bear in mind the possibility that for whatever reason you have swallowed a whole set of anti-supernatural assumptions: Dead men always remain dead therefore Jesus could not have risen! And that you are reading these assumptions back into the gospel narratives, to the extent of reaching conclusions for which there is no historical or psychological warrant.

Hi Roger,

Nice try, but when you were writing that, did you *really* believe it?

I'm afraid that nothing you have said casts the slightest doubt on the reasonableness of the bodily resurrection of Jesus as the best possible explanation for the events of the first Easter.

The problem is that we are not trying to explain the events of the first easter - we are trying to explain the *stories* of the events of the first easter, written down decades later by the people who remained convinced; by now any dissenters had quit the scene and gone back to Judaism or Paganism or whatever. We also know that the stories that were circulating in these decades were weird and wonderful indeed - we have but a tiny selection, and unprovenanced at that. Luke even admits as much as his reason for trying to write his own account (which is of course also error-prone).

However, let's get back to the important points here. You have correctly identified that elements of these stories (for example Matthew's dead walking the streets) are not true in any strict literal sense. The variances between the gospels in relation to the precise same events (and this even when they derive from a common literary source!) tells us two things: firstly, the bible is not inerrant (because they cannot all be "True" - they contain elements, however trivial, that are contradictory. They are not some divinely inspired Word of God). Secondly, this is diagnostic of that old favourite, Spin. The gospels (as John admits) were written as propaganda, "that you may believe". The post-resurrection appearances of Jesus are fantastic ghost stories, similar to those told in all cultures in all times. They have been hammed up and embellished, and if they represent anything, they represent what people maybe *think* they saw, but that's all.

One thing is very clear - an actual physical resurrection is very much *not* the best explanation underlying the stories that we now have. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that if Christianity *was* God's Great Plan to save mankind, the gospels are a pretty shoddy collection of yarns to evidence it. At best, they are evidence of what some people believed, >60CE. Yet we know that some people believed in resurrections way back in the 30s CE, and were quite happy to view Jesus as JtB or another prophet, physically resurrected. Defaulting to a resurrection was natural to these folks, in order to explain something. Heck, even the supposedly sensible Greeks thought that Paul and Barnabas were gods. These were credulous times.

As for Jesus's family and associates, James is just one of the coterie - I've already explained that Jesus had contacts of whom the disciples seem to have had no other knowledge. This would not be unusual. Perhaps he *was* trying to raise an army. Perhaps he *was* attempting the overthrow of the Romans. The disciples were just one facet of a wider picture, and they are the only facet of which we have any idea nowadays.

So we can see that the gospels are not gospel (they cannot be). Let's hurl the boat out a bit, and assume that Jesus *did* rise from the dead. We are then faced with the fact that the gospels provide spectacularly poor evidence of that event. We then need to ask ourselves why that is, if this is god's big plan. Of course, if it *isn't* god's big plan, then it all makes perfect sense.

The best possible explanation remains that somehow or other, one particular group of Jesus-followers lost track of his body between Friday evening and Sunday morning; the story of a resurrection arose from there as a reasonable explanation for why a tomb might be empty. In order to explain what happened next, we just need to invoke human psychology, not an actual bodily resurrection.

I don't know whether this is the sort of argument that Jonathan Edwards followed, but it's worth thinking about. I would encourage you to simply get the passages from the 4 gospels together and lay them out in parallel - you'll see where the various mistakes are more easily that way.

Cheers,

-A

A,

I find your tone unconscionably patronising. I really don't see any point in continuing this discussion. You have not addressed the points I have made, and you seem hopelessly unaware of just how compelling the evidence for the resurrection really is. New Testament scholars spend their lives reading and examining the gospels in parallel and in isolation. It is true that among them there are those who approach them with the same assumptions as you do. But there are many others (probably the majority now in fact) who find them, though different, to be complementary. Having read them (many times) in that way, I cannot see how you reach the conclusions you do. The only explanation I can find is that you have assumed a position of unshakeable suspicion (rather like Bart Ehrman), refusing to see the obvious. I suggest that you read FF Bruce, NT Wright, Craig Blomberg, Darrell Bock, William Lane Craig, Gary Habermas, Craig Evans, to name but a few. No doubt you have already weighed these people in the balance and found them wanting. But have you really engaged with the arguments for the resurrection and the reliability of the gospel accounts of Jesus' life?

Roger,

Have you also looked at the countless Islamic scholars who can find convincing evidence to back up supernatural elements within Islam? Or likewise with Hindu scholars and Mormon etc ad nauseum?

Or are you only special pleading on your own beliefs?

Personally I do not believe in the supernatural(as I have seen no convincing evidence except special pleading and arguments from authority)and I apply this across the board. The problem that I see with supporters of the supernatural is that they do so on a subjective sectarian basis. The reason that I see for this is that you cannot validate another religion's supernatural stories without invalidating your own. I believe that evidence should be standalone.

Amenhotep is right when he says that supernatural stories were very common at this time and many were allegedly written by eye-witnesses.

As Carl Sagan said "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".

Dylan Dog,

All of us I suppose indulge in a degree of special pleading in favour of our own beliefs, be they religious or secularist, theistic, deistic or atheistic.

I have witnessed debates between Christians and Muslims, and engaged in debates with Buddhists, Jehovah's witnesses, New Age travellers and atheists. I am very much in favour of dialogue with adherents of whatever belief system. I am familiar, and am becoming more and more familiar, with the arguments. In each case (and presumably in my own case as well) the arguments were subjective rather than driven by reason alone. That is as true of my atheist and agnostic friends (as they would admit) as it is in my case. And it is just as true in your case too as it is in any one else's.

But there is a difference between "subjective" and "sectarian". I do not believe that you can dismiss Christian believers per se as "sectarian", except in so far as any belief system (including atheism) involves accepting and following the authority of others (in my case Scripture) rather than relying entirely on my own. (If you have any doubts about this just listen to the number of times "atheists" refer to "authorities" like Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens or (if they are a bit more cultured and better educated) Nietzsche or Bertrand Russell).

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". Indeed. The claim that Natural Selection could bring everything into existence as well as shape its development is an extraordinary claim. I frankly find the evidence insufficient (and there are many unbelievers who share my scepticism and who are hanging in there for something better). The claim that the universe itself sprang into existence out of nothing (out of nothing nothing comes) is indeed an extraordinary claim. No evidence is forthcoming, and even Dawkins himself admits as much. But that doesn't stop him claiming it!

Christians are under no obligation to produce SCIENTIFICALLY verifiable evidence for God's existence, or for any other of their claims. You must surely be aware that there is a great deal of what we assume to be true which cannot be scientifically verified. How can the great ideals that we all instinctively strive towards and yearn for (LOVE, BEAUTY, TRUTH, JUSTICE) be proved scientifically? And yet we believe in them. How can the truth of any past event be determined empirically? And yet we do not doubt that they happened.

As for subjective evidence of God's existence, I and many others can point to changed lives, ruined lives restored, the impact on many darkened worlds of Christ and of the lives He touched. It might be politically incorrect to compare the impact of lives transformed by the Christian gospel with that of lives inflamed by calls to Jihad (so I'll not make that comparison!?), but think of the great good that the Christian gospel has done in many parts of the world. I know the crusades and the Inquisition were abhorrent, but on balance only a very biased mind would fail to see that wherever the message of Christ has penetrated and been submitted to it has brought enduring good. You'll realise how much good it has brought when secularists and the "new atheist" brigade succeed in driving it out of the public square. Watch this space!

Roger,

Atheism is not a belief system, it is the absence of belief. Moreover the arguments from authority from atheists, I would say that they are not making extraordinary claims or relying on special pleading in order to back up supernatural events(btw in the list of names you mention I would add David Hume).

"Indeed. The claim that Natural Selection could bring everything into existence as well as shape its development is an extraordinary claim."

Not so extraordinary and the evidence is ordinary and is accepted by those of all creeds and none. Evolution by natural selection does not explain how life came into being rather how it developed. Moreover the vast majority of the "opposition" comes from the fanatical wings of religious groups. Your post seem reasoned and intelligent please don't tell me you are a biblical creationist!?

The science of abiogenesis is more a matter of astro-physiscs and indeed no-one knows for sure how this happened and there are a couple of different hypothesis. I actually find that reassuring! in that science is honest enough to admit this-contrast this with various creationists who know-are 100% in the right!

Of course there are things that science cannot test ie., the Judeo-Christian god, Allah, Thor, the tooth fairy. Ideals and ethics are more philosophical.

"How can the truth of any past event be determined empirically?"

Umm archaeological, inscriptions, writings, coins etc etc

Yes Christianity has brought good, as has Hinduism, Islam, Shinto etc etc and as you admit has brought bad as well. However many other parts of the world have also developed morally and ethically without hearing the gospel. It's the golden rule ie., do onto others...that predates Christianity and most other faiths.

It depeds on what you mea, Dylan Dog, by a "Biblical creationist". I am a creationist in th sense that I believe that God started the whole shabang. He spoke the universe into existence. Its origin is the creative LOGOS, the divine FIAT. Nevertheless I'm open as regards what happened next and how it happened. I'm not a scientist so I can't pronounce on the process of creation. I accept that the universe probably may well be about 14 billion years old, an the earth about 4 billion. I see no reason for disputing that. I'm attracted by John Polkinghorne's idea of God creating a self-creating universe, front-loading it with "instructions" as to how to move from one stage to the next. But as I say, I ca't be dogmatic about that. But the universe is not all there is. God (a self existent necessary and personal being) created it and gave it its inherent order FROM THE OUTSIDE, which is why God need not have been created (pace Dawkins), and why determining his existence is not susceptible to the scientific method, as the scientific methos exists to explore the universe and not that which is outside of it.

Does that make me a Biblical creationist? Maybe it does. But I'm not a literalist. The first chapters of genesis are true in a sense that is much more important than the scientific sense.

Yes, natural selection is not about how life came into existence, but about how different species evolved. I have no problem with that. But for Dawkins (with no evidence whatsoever) it is more than that. He wants it to explain how life came into existence as well. That is an extraordinary claim which requires evidence which has not been produced.

If it can be accepted that the universe is not all there is, that it was brought into being by an intelligent and personal Creator (why is this hypothesis not plausible?) then that provides a perfectly reasonable explanation for the origin of the universe. You mention theories for the posible origin of the universe (tho' the Big Bang is still the most widely accepted paradigm. I guess you are referring to the multiverse theory, or Hawkings' hypothesis re the existence of an actual rather than a theoretical "abstract" infinity. But the absence of a satisfying materialistic paradigm bears out my point about so many scientists believing in the absence of evidence. Is this not "blind faith"? In any case the multiverse theory does not in fact remove the problem of how it all began. Something must have "spawned" this foam of potential universes among which ours happened to be the lucky one.

Please don't insult your own intelligence by coming out with the tooth-fairy or flying spaghetti machine analogies. Belief in an intelligent, personal Creator is plausible in a sense in which these figures of fantasy clearly are not. They were never intended as anything more than fantasy. As for the gods of Olympus and the like, they were projections of instinctive human longing for transcendence into a transcendent sphere in the absence of revelation. It is possible to argue that when divine revelation occurred, some of the elements of these pagan projections found their true fulfilment. Pagan myth turned out to have been a kind of "good dream", when Christ (the Logos) came the dream came true, and at the same time was shorn of its absurdities.

You refer to archaeology and documentary evidence. I agree with you of course. Which is why I am bemused by the fact that documetary evidence for the reliability of the New Testament is scorned while similar evidence for less well attested events of ancient history is "taken as read". There is a vastly greater number of manuscripts of both the Old and New Testmaments thn for any other writings of antiquity, and the earliest ones are much older. One can't help getting the feeling that the dice is loaded!

Cheers

Roger

Roger,

Goodness me, I thought we had the beginnings of a wee debate going there - I had no idea you were about to chicken out and run for the hills! Do you really believe your arguments? If so, why not try standing up for them instead of popping back down the bunny hole? (I also had no idea my initial metaphor would prove so apposite!).

Yes, I am aware that many people spend a long time looking for ways to analyse the NT, and that doesn't bother me in the least. I don't accept arguments from some sort of authority, and neither should you (or Craig or Bruce or Augustine). You've already shown that you're bright enough; would you like to actually try arguing the piece, rather than playing billy goat gruff?

You accuse me of not addressing your points - I rather think that I *have*, but if I missed one, bring it back up by all means. We have already established that the gospels contain errors. We have already established that an actual resurrection is just one interpretation one can derive from the gospels, and not a very convincing one at that. Other less extraordinary can very adequately explain all the data. The gospels are merely stories of what some people believed at some point in time, at least 30 years after Jesus died.

If you *really* think that an actual resurrection is a valid explanation for how we ended up with these stories, then you're going to have to do a heck of a lot better than crying "I'm being patronised!" and scarpering. You're better than that - you showed that in one of your previous posts.

Cheers,
-A

I'm not scarpering, as you'll have seen from my responses to Dylan Dog. Why shouldn't I refer you to people whose work I have read and who are in a better position than I am to argue to toss with you so to speak (reading is a kind of dialogue). I'm quite prepared to admit that I do not have either the time or the energy to do all the New Testament documentary evidence-exploration that I would need to do to satisfy you, and nor do I know the ancient languages. You don't mean to tell me that merely by spreading out the texts themselves and reading them "in parallel" you can arrive at the conclusion, by your own unaided resources, that "it don't make sense. Look at all them contradictions I mean to say. Com'n sense int it? It's all a load of bull****!" Congratulations! That is a truly wonderful feat of textual analysis! Do you mean to say that you can just write off the reliability of the gospels, and all the work done by those who have read studied and come to opposite conclusions! Get real! The reason I refer you to these people is that they have all spent a great deal more time on the documents than you or I, and they happen not to agree with you. So much the worse for them, you must be thinking!

So you don't accept the arguments of any sort of authority, don't you? You mean that you have empirical proof for everything that you end up accepting. Or you are capable of reaching all your conclusions about everything just by examining the evidence for yourself? Is that how you studied history? Is that how you arrive at bona fide conclusions about what is going on in the world?

The gospel accounts of the resurrection do contain discrepancies. I have accounted for that, and you did not comment on my explanation. That does not mean to say they contain errors in the sense that the writers were pursuing an agenda and invented ad lib to adapt the events to their agenda. Luke's credentials as a historian are impressive. There is no reason to doubt him when he assures Theophilus that he has "carefully investigated everything from the beginning", and that his text is "an orderly account ... so that you may KNOW with certainty the things you have been taught. OK, Luke had an agenda. Of course he did! And, as you pointed out, so did John. They were evangelists for goodness sake! Their aim was to assure people that Jesus was who he said he was and who Paul and the others were proclaiming him to be. That does not make them unhistorical. The fact that they were trying to persuade people of the truth of the Christian gospel does nothing to undermine the truth value of their accounts. When the government organises a media campaign to try to persuade people to look after the elderly or not to drink and drive, they do not invent the images and statistics they use to drive home their point. On the contrary, in order to persuade they have to make jolly sure that they are not distorting the truth. The fact that they have an agenda does not undermine the facts that they mobilise for the campaign. On the contrary, the urgency of the message makes the facts all the more striking and significant. The evangelists, because of the urgency of the message, had to make very sure that they were not distorting the facts about Jesus. Hostile witnesses who could have challenged their account abounded! They would have been delighted to be able to heckle from the back of the temple, or from the far end of the town square: "Hey guv, that's not what happened! Nothing of the sort. I was there and saw everything with my own eyes! You're making half of it up!"

And by the way, the tone of: "I would encourage you to simply get the passages from the 4 gospels together and lay them out in parallel - you'll see where the various mistakes are more easily that way." IS PATRONISING.

Cripes, hell hath no fury like a disciple patronised, eh? OK, you're admitting discrepancies. Discrepancies mean someone is not telling the truth. Sure, yeah, I've heard the notion about Matthew extrapolating to the end times. He lied for theological effect, is another way of putting it. Yeah, I've heard that they were all providing a different angle - this is really lame, because they don't provide anything interesting that could not have been provided in a single narrative.

Luke's credentials as a historian are no better than those of Herodotus (for instance), and no-one gets antsy if we say that Herodotus got things wrong. Actually, Luke is substantially worse, because he never names his sources, or gives variant options. I also think it unlikely that he was a "physician" (contra one little quip in Colossians), because his interest in medical matters is nil, even when he has the opportunity. But that's a side issue. So much has been made of "Dr Luke" - it seems a shame to puncture it.

You're the one protesting that we should view the gospels in a historical fashion, and that is exactly what I have been doing. You are also exemplifying (I don't blame you for this btw) why so many people get put off even discussing the errors in the gospels - ardent defenders jump down their throats. Better to sit still and shut up. Well, sorry - that doesn't work for me, and you're still not engaging with the core issues.

We have discrepant texts purporting to be the word of god (actually, they purport no such thing - that is a much later and completely unwarranted attribution) which appear to attest a spectacularly amazing event, but can be very readily explained by what we know of the times, history, and of human psychology.

One point that is worth raising is that it is irrelevant if someone said "no, that didn't happen" from the back of the temple - we know that people (even "christians") *did* say such things, and it's not that the early christians countered the arguments - they just ignored them or waffled around them as they do to this day (vide supra ;-) [As a side issue, at the time the gospels - at least Mt,Lk&Jn - were being cobbled together, the temple itself was a pile of ruins]. We also know that in C1CE the wide and crazy variety of beliefs in Judaism and the Roman Empire at large was impressive indeed. What was one more nutty sect in such an atmosphere?

Yes, I know that some people have made a whole industry out of finding ever more intricate ways of avoiding facing the shortcomings in the gospels - Islamic scholars, Mormons, JWs (DD has been through all this previously) do exactly the same thing, so it's not exactly hot news - people can fool themselves.

Let's look at this another way. Suppose for a crazy mo that Jesus *did* rise from the dead after a day and a half, and it was important that this fact was evidenced really really well - the future of mankind depended on it. Would the gospels suffice as evidence for such a truly remarkable event?

It's a "no", I'm afraid.

Do you mean to say that you can just write off the reliability of the gospels, and all the work done by those who have read studied and come to opposite conclusions!

Precisely.

Because a/ the reliability of the gospels is contradicted by the gospels themselves, and b/ the "conclusions" of your heroes are precisely the "conclusions" they started out with.

Try reading them as an atheist (just pretend, go on - you don't even have to place them in parallel - I know you don't want to do that), and see how plausible you find them. My point is that they do not constitute good evidence on this key issue.

Cheers,
-A

As a side issue, at the time the gospels - at least Mt,Lk&Jn - were being cobbled together, the temple itself was a pile of ruins]".

I do know this actually. I wasn't referring to the gospels being read in public. I was referring to the preaching of the apostles as recorded in Acts. The summaries of the sermons that we are given are only summaries. Presumably there was a great deal of reference in their sermons to the public words and actions of Jesus in the presence and in the hearing of the same people that Peter (for example) was addressing. Peter would have been shouted down if he had fabricated the stories in order to make a theological point.

Re the discrepancies, note the point I made earlier in the Wittgenstein analogy. Discrepancies are not always mistakes. I made the point earlier that just because one of the gospels mentions, for example, the presence of two figures at the tomb and another only one does not mean that their were not two. It just means that one of them mentioned one and the other two. What there is no discrepancy about, however, is that the tomb was empty, whoever arrived there first afterwards, and whatever exactly the words were that were spoken and by whom. There is no discrepancy as regards the central event. I could say therefore that YOU are the oe who is avoiding the CORE issue.

"Precisely.

Because a/ the reliability of the gospels is contradicted by the gospels themselves, and b/ the "conclusions" of your heroes are precisely the "conclusions" they started out with."

If this is rue, it could also be true of you (I won't say of your "heroes" because you have made it patently clear that you don't actually need anyone to do any of the documentary analysis for you. You seem to think that just by spreading out the texts and reading them in parallel all the errors leap off the page and condemn the whole).

By the way, whether or not I regard these people as my "heroes" does not in any way undermine the validity of their research. You cannot debunk them just by assuming a priori that they have started out from a premise of belief. They may have, and they may not. That is actually irrelevant. It does not acquit you of the obligation to respond to what such scholars say. That is an example of a kind of ad hominem argument. "You reach those conclusions because you are already convinced of them". "You argue that way because you are a Christian". "Your analysis of the proletariat is the result of the fact that you are a Marxist! Therefore I am not going to listen to you!" You would not be very impressed by that line of argument, would you? You would expect me to engage with the analysis itself rather than write it off a priori because it was produced by a Marxist.

Hi Roger,

Your analogy re Wittgenstein and the poker is entirely a good one - what you seem to deny is that some of the accounts (or, more likely, *all*) are in fact *wrong*. In the gospels we have a fantastic opportunity to view just a small selection of the variance of opinion (which is what it was) that was present at the time.

Just a mention of Acts, we *do* know that people did not believe, and shouted down the apostles on many occasions. But remember that we are talking about a melting pot here - there was no "official" account of events, and the death of Jesus was to everyone else a total non-event. Acts, you may recall, was also written by a partisan, and doesn't express any of the arguments that the disciples would have faced.

But back to the gospels - the only thing (it would seem) that they *do* agree on is an empty tomb. That's pretty much about it. They do not agree about the post-resurrection appearances or the events on Sunday morning.

Here's a question for you - why did the stone have to be rolled away? Surely it would have been more impressive if they had *opened* the tomb (Peter and the Beloved Disciple seem to have been up), and found no body. There is an explanation for all this, and this has not been adequately countered by the Christian apologists. Resurrections were easy back then - they were *especially* easy if someone nicked the body (Matthew would have us believe that this was common knowledge back then).

The problem for you is this: we are trying to tie down a precise (and you would argue significant) historical event with imperfect and contradictory texts. What we have to explain are the texts, and these are entirely explicable without invoking any resurrections or appearances. This explanation is therefore far preferable as a default.

But can we use the texts to get closer to what *actually* happened? Here, I think we can. I've mentioned above that Jesus had associates who were unknown to the disciples. The young man who had remained at the tomb told the ladies that the body was being moved back to Galilee. The ladies misinterpreted this, and the rest was a snowball effect, like we see in Islam, Mormonism, and the other man-made religions.

Hi Roger,

Got to be brief as going on hols and will not be back for awhile however...

I actually have little problems with your first 2 paragraphs. If you want to believe in theistic evolution...fair enough!

As for Dawkins, have read some of his books but honestly cannot comment on what you said as I do not have the time to trawl through the net to check it.

Yes I was referring to different hypothesis, and I actually see it as a strength rather than a weakness that science does not have a definitive answer at the moment. I believe that your argument is the 'God of the gaps'. God/s used to be used to explain everything, but they have been squeezed and squeezed to the one of the last unexplainables(for the moment anyway).

Please don't insult the FSM!(bless his noodly appendages!).

"As for the gods of Olympus and the like, they were projections of instinctive human longing for transcendence into a transcendent sphere in the absence of revelation."

That's how I feel about all gods. A Hindu would argue it was Vishnu, A Muslim for Allah, A Buddhist for Buddha etc etc.

Personally I do not "scorn" the Bible per se. I used to study it and do realise that there are historically verifiable points in it. I employ the same methods across the board in evaluating evidence. Just because a document is old does not make it anymore reliable. For eg., I like Tacitus, Cassius Dio and Suetonius though when the latter author states that Julius Caesar was seen to transcend up to the gods on a golden cloud at his funeral and this was eye-witnessed...I think mmmmm

Anyway have to run, been good talking and I am sure that Amenhotep will keep you busy!

regards

DD

"My point is that they do not constitute good evidence on this key issue."

By the way, what, in your view, would constitute good documentary evidence in the gospels? The absence of any "discrepancy" between them, any difference in any of the details, would surely be even more suspicious. Would it not suggest collusion and straight copying? The absence of discrepancy would therefore bring the gospel accounts under fire for that reason. Maybe a description of some rather more dramatic post-mortem appearances? If the accounts had been fabricated for theological purposes maybe that is what we would be reading. But then they would, precisely for that reason, be open to the charge of fabrication. The accounts that we have are convincing precisely because they show Jesus' followers, and the powers-that-be, struggling to come to terms with what has happened. That is what gives them their ring of truth.

Hi Roger,
So let me get this straight - if they *agree*, they are unconvincing. If they *disagree*, that proves that they are right.

OK, I can dig that groovy logic, man. But it does kinda underline my previous point about how this would be a really daft Plan for any omniscient god to save mankind. Furthermore, it would seem to indicate that it is theologically OK to *lie* (or at least be economical with the truth) to get punters into the Kingdom. Hardly very ethical, or worthy of the description "scripture".

So where do the falsehoods end?

I said discrepancies, in the sense of differences of detail between one text and another. That, twist it as you will, is not the same as "lies" or "falsehoods". As I pointed out most of the discrepancies / differences can be accounted for on the basis of different theological emphasis, and others on the basis of the importance they are giving to the central events as opposed to the peripheral circumstances. Can you find me one example of where the authors appear to have "lied" to get "punters into the kingdom"? That does not mean, "one example of something that anti-supernatural prejudice will not allow you to accept".

Well, you've already acknowledged that Matthew's Day of the Dead is not true. I would suggest the completely unattested earthquake is very probably not true. Did the girls see an angel (Matthew), a chap in a white robe (Mark), two chaps in white (Luke), or no-one at all initially (John). Someone is telling porkies.

It's true that the gospel writers may have *believed* what they were writing, but what we have here is not different perspectives - we have different variations on a legend that has been through several generations of Chinese whispers and embellishment. These are not different theological perspectives - these are stories handed down after several previous careless owners that show intriguing details about the evolution of a myth.

Your problem is that they represent real contradictions. They cannot all be true. I appreciate that you'd rather not accept this, but it doesn't change the fact. Wittgenstein or no, in the resurrection stories we have a very poor record of the events following the disappearance of the body of Jesus. The accounts that we have do not allow us to draw the (highly surprising) conclusion that he rose from the dead. I keep reminding you to remember that people rose from the dead all the time back then - it was no big deal. Surmising, and then BELIEVING in a resurrection was a piece of cake, and as the years rolled by, that became cemented as an article of faith, and eventually the gospel-writers all got their own little version of it, never suspecting that they would all be gathered together into a bunch, and shown to be bogus.

-A

Amen

No porkies necessary, whatsoever.

If that was a crime scene and there were numerous witnesses you would get just such discrepencies. If all accounts were identical it would undermine their authenticity and scream of "fix".

John was an eyewitness, Luke was a painstaking historian if not an eyewitness, according to the first chapter of Luke.

A man in white can easily be an angel...

no big mystery....

PB

PB, you don't get it, do you? The discrepancies are fatal to the notion that the bible is fact. If you accept that a man in white can easily be an angel, you can surely accept that an angel can simply be a man in white. The point is that they are not simply different viewpoints - they contradict each other.

This is to be expected - they were circulating for centuries before anyone bunged them all together in a "New Testament", at which stage it was too late to fix the "errors" into a coherent story, and theologians have been trying to dream up excuses for the contradictions ever since.

As for Luke's historical credentials, as I've mentioned, he does not cite his sources, he does not mention variant opinions (such as "John's", "Mark's" or "Matthew's"), he includes daft things like the Magnificat, which can't possibly have been recorded verbatim, he mangles the "angel's" speech to the girlies at the tomb, etc. Self-praise is no recommendation, and his historical (like his supposed medical) credentials have been grossly over-estimated.

Incidentally, how discrepant would the accounts have to be for you to treat them as untrue? Maybe the *more* contradictions we have, the more reliable they are with regard to the central event? The only conclusion that we can draw by being fair to the gospels is that the tomb was empty, and the stone rolled away.

Why was the stone rolled away? Wouldn't Jesus have been able to teleport through it, like he did in the closed room?

At the time Matthew was being written, the commonly accepted story (which the gospels do nothing to refute) was that his body was taken from this temporary tomb for burial elsewhere (as had been the plan in the first place, and was the very reason why the women were going to the tomb).

The most likely explanation is that Matthew invented the Day of the Dead, the earthquake, the military guard, the soldiers, etc, *specifically* because the commonly accepted truth of the matter was that Jesus's body had been removed for burial elsewhere (in Galilee, as the "angel" said). We *know* that Jesus had an extensive family network, not all of whom were happy with what he was doing; he also had unknown associates in Jerusalem and elsewhere.

In this scenario, postulating an actual resurrection on some very dubious and unprovenanced stories strikes me as the height of folly.

Gamaliel was wrong - if something "succeeds", that is no guarantee that it is of god rather than of man. It's all human.

And very interesting too, if you treat the gospels properly as historical documents.

Amen

Please drop the presumption you have absolute truth on this matter.
I am certainly not approaching it like that and I believe in absolute truth.

Why do so many relativistic thinkers on this blog who do not believe in absolute truth speak as though they were speaking ex-cathedra? it is such a paradox!
If you think the Magnificat cant have been verbatim how narrow are the mansions of your soul! Can one of the most Godly women who ever lived not sing in poetry when she finds she is to give birth to the saviour of the world?
The type of woman she was, she would have been constantly worshipping and praising God during her normal daily duties, even if only inwardly. This practise is scriptural and later a command by Paul. So the magnificat could have been the climax of a life of worship and meditation on the prophecies of the messiah and the psalms.
Historical narrative does not need to be precise at all times to be inspired. This confuses occult automatic writing with holy writ.
You laugh at it but you have given *no* serious answer to the fact that disprepencies are normal from accounts of the same event; newspapers do it all the time and it is completely normal in police investigations; if it does not happen police are very suspicious. You raise valid counterpoints to this but dont pretend you have refuted my argument; you havent even begun.

Can you please explain the unconscious soldiers at the tomb, what knocked out these elite shock troopers of the Roman Empire; bright white robes?

Why were the soldiers bribed by the authorities not to talk about what happened to them if there was nothing to hide?

Why did water pour from Jesus side on the cross when pierced with a spear (a generally accepted sign of death in modern medicine)?

How did Jesus later eat fish and allow Thomas to put his fingers in his wounds if only a ghost arose?

Amen, you are very well read and very intelligent but you have had to climb down on this blog before, as have I, so a little more humility perhaps?

PB

PS ref earliest posts on this blog... the reason I have a right to comment on content of this blog is twofold;-

1) I fund it through my taxes

2) The Ö÷²¥´óÐã claims to be impartial.

I never once suggested this blog should reflect my personal views but I dont think it fairly reflects the balance of views for NI taxpayers. I would be more than happy for it to reflect the views of all religions present in NI, including athiesm.

Hi PB,

See, this is my point. There are some things that are true, and one of those things is that not everything in the bible is true. I'm glad you're finally agreeing with that. I suggest you incorporate that into your understanding of the whole shebang.

Can one of the most Godly women who ever lived not sing in poetry when she finds she is to give birth to the saviour of the world?

I'm sure she positively warbled as she skipped among Galilean daisies. How Luke got hold of the lyrics is another matter. Unless, of course, he made them up or hijacked them from another current hymn.

Historical narrative does not need to be precise at all times to be inspired. This confuses occult automatic writing with holy writ.

No, historical writing is very often in error, and we can spot that by cross-checking. And when we do that with the gospels, we find that they are in error. Hence any pretensions (not on the part of the gospellers, who were just blokes scribbling down what they thought they believed and what other people should too) of the gospels being "holy writ" are clearly bogus.

Matthew made it up. The other gospellers mention no such thing. Also, "elite shock troopers" is pathetic. Even *if* the Romans granted the squabbling priests an armed guard for the tomb, it would have most likely been a couple of local squaddies with damn all else to do. However, the episode has no backing, even in the bible, and is most likely just made up.

Why were the soldiers bribed by the authorities not to talk about what happened to them if there was nothing to hide?

Because it was made up. See above. This is standard Matthew exaggeration, like the zombie march. You should actually read the other gospels on this. Funny that the lassies didn't think "oh, I hope the elite shock troopers of the Roman Empire don't massacre us!" Matthew has a story to tell, and he's putting on the bells and whistles. That's all.

Why did water pour from Jesus side on the cross when pierced with a spear (a generally accepted sign of death in modern medicine)?

Crucifixion and a spear in the side is also considered by the most learned medical authorities, supported by decades of cutting edge research, to be likely to lead to death. I'm going out on a limb here, but I'm guessing that he was maybe, like, *actually dead*. I'm pleased to see you're keeping up with the literature on the topic.

How did Jesus later eat fish and allow Thomas to put his fingers in his wounds if only a ghost arose?

Because these are just wee stories that were dreamt up decades later. You should read them in parallel to see how utterly unconvincing they are. Pure ghostie stories, not even supported by the gospels themselves.

It's not unusual. After the eruption of Vesuvius, people *swore* that they saw giants roaming the slopes of the mountain, hurling rocks and ash down on Herculaneum and Pompeii. I've already mentioned that Herod thought that Jesus was JTB with his knapper stitched back on. Credulous times, imperfect memories, wishful thinking and theological trauma/displacement. There's your explanation right there.

Now, Roger will regard this as patronising, and hey ho, maybe it is. But I suggest you actually *read* your bible, and see if you can swim a bit for yourself before reaching for Bruce or Craig to haul you out of the mire. These lads are trying to bale out the titanic with a tea-cup. That's one reason why they have spent their whole professional lives doing this (and wasting their time).

-A

Amen -

All you have basically said is that you just dont believe the gospels. Fine.

But you have made no serious argument to refute them, just speculation.

You are free to do this but it carries no weight.

BTW I have just seen Edwards interviewed on Ö÷²¥´óÐã NI and he said he was not an athiest but "somewhere in between" that and a Christian.

He also emphasised he was on a journey and did not know where it would end!!!!

PB