Hi Brady,

At your request, I am beginning my post by discussing the historicity of the Gospels, especially the events at the tomb and the subsequent appearances of Jesus.

I will begin by offering some excerpts from my essay at www.askepticalapproach.com.

On a web site at http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/larry_taylor/messiahgate.html, readers will find an article written by Larry A. Taylor. Following are Taylor’s academic credentials: B.A. Math, Ambassador College (1973), M.A., History, Cal. State LA, (1982), M.S. Computer Science, Cal. Poly. Pomona (1988), Ph.D. Computer Science, UCLA (1997).

Taylor offers some very valuable comments regarding the reliability of ancient historical documents. Following are some excerpts from the article.

“Historian R.G. Collingwood argues that the fundamental attribute of the critical historian is skepticism regarding testimony about the past. All we have are documents and artifacts. Documents can be propaganda, or real evidence but biased, or completely forged in a later century. (Johnny: I would like to add to those three possibilities that instances of innocent but inaccurate revelations are also a reasonable possibility. An excellent example is the very first verse in the Bible, which says ‘In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.’ That verse may very well have been an example of innocent but inaccurate revelation.) Examples of famous forgeries include ‘Donation of Constantine,’ supposedly a deed of gift of Vatican lands to the Pope by the Roman emperor, but actually fabricated in the eighth century; the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ and Minnesota’s famous ‘Kensington Rune Stone.’”

“The treatment of Tiberius, emperor from 14 to 37 CE, is an example of the bias of writers. Nearly all ancient writers whose works have survived agree that Tiberius was a monster in human form. They depict him at an age of eighty indulging in a variety of vices that seem even physically impossible, much less likely. What would be our knowledge of Tiberius is other ancient sources had survived.” 

“How does this apply to the story of Jesus? Simply that all of the early critics are dead. Skeptical opinions were banned. Christian opinions, other than those of the establishment, were banned. Books were destroyed, and later, heretics were burned.” 

Brady, if heaven and hell are actually at stake, are you claiming that God has offered such case in the New Testament regarding the events at the tomb and the subsequent appearances that there is almost no room for doubt regarding those claims? How do you account for the fact that many loving and decent followers of religions other than Christianity has been unwilling to accept Christianity? Would you answer by saying that only enlightened people are able to accept Christianity? Consider the following excerpt from my essay:

"James Holding, a pseudonym for Robert Turkel, is a Christian who has a much visited web site on the Internet at tektonics.org. His essay on the growth of the early Christian Church is titled ‘The Impossible Faith.’ Holding has such large following that a number of scholarly skeptics have devoted a good deal of time to refuting his writings. One web sited devoted to refuting some of Holding's writings can be found at http://www.tektonics.com/exposed.html." 

"Holding lists seventeen factors that attempt to reasonably prove that if Jesus did not rise from the dead, Christianity would not have flourished as it did, at least in the early stages of its growth. For purposes of this essay, I will comment on only four of the seventeen factors. One need not dispute all seventeen of Holding’s factors in order to become suspicious of all of them. In a court trial, if a witness makes 17 assertions, and if the jury suspects that 4 of the assertions are not valid, they will automatically be suspicious of the other 13 assertions without having reasonable proof that the other 13 assertions are not valid."

"In factor #1, Holding's chief point is his claim that various stigmas associated partly with the demeaning nature of crucifixion would have made Christianity much too unattractive to most people, implying that only enlightened people would have bought the story of the Resurrection. Holding has unwittingly implied the following hypothesis: As various claims become more preposterous and illogical in the opinion of an average person, the reasons for believing them become more compelling to an enlightened person. In order to show the absurdity of such a notion, here is the very same notion stated in a different way but with the same ramifications: As various claims become less preposterous and more logical to an average person, the reasons for believing them become less compelling to an enlightened person."

I look forward to your reply.

Sincerely,            

Johnny Skeptic               

Round 1 - From Brady

Hi Johnny,

I read your post. However, I could not find a proposition or your position on that proposition. If we are going to have a debate, we need to agree on what we are debating and state our positions and what we plan on demonstrating. If not, then how do we expect to know when our position has been presented?

If your proposition has something to do with the NT not being historically reliable, then state that and what you plan to show. But you will need some sort of methodology to show that the NT does not meet the same criteria that other documents of the period meet.

Johnny, your last post was not much different in method than your previous posts: You find a couple of so-called authorities that agree with you (which is easy to do, because there are authorities that agree with virtually every opinion), then you quote them as if their opinion is the absolute truth and think that is an argument. That is not an argument. Additionally, there are a lot of problems with those opinions that should be obvious to the casual observer. Let me point one out:

“Historian R.G. Collingwood argues that the fundamental attribute of the critical historian is skepticism regarding testimony about the past. All we have are documents and artifacts. Documents can be propaganda, or real evidence but biased, or completely forged in a later century….

“The treatment of Tiberius, emperor from 14 to 37 CE, is an example of the bias of writers. Nearly all ancient writers whose works have survived agree that Tiberius was a monster in human form. They depict him at an age of eighty indulging in a variety of vices that seem even physically impossible, much less likely. What would be our knowledge of Tiberius if other ancient sources had survived.”

If we are going to be skeptical, are we going to be skeptical about all positions or just the ones we don’t like? If so, then, regarding Tiberius, we must be skeptical about any document that would say that Tiberius was a bad guy or a good guy or an in-between guy. Your expert says that all the writers we have show Tiberius as a bad guy, but suggests that is not exactly true. What is his contrary opinion based on? Was he there; is that how he knows the prime sources are wrong? Is he psychic; did he have an out of body experience and travel back in time? Your expert concludes, “What would be our knowledge of Tiberius if other ancient sources had survived.” If we had other documents that said that Tiberius wasn’t that bad, shouldn’t we be skeptical about them too? Couldn’t they be the propaganda, or biased, or completely forged in a later century? What would be our knowledge of Tiberius if even more other ancient sources had survived?

Given this approach we can know nothing about any event or person in history. And anything that is asserted that we don’t like we can just say, “It’s all propaganda, or biased, or completely forged.” Not much of a methodology, is it?

Regards,