Dialog 3

Dialog 3 - Round 4

From Johnny 2/23/05

Brady wrote: In my paper, "Atheists and the Resurrection," I point out that most atheists or skeptics do not want to deal with the historical argument for the Resurrection. That they run from it. We see that has happened again. In my paper I call such arguments as Johnny has produced "going outside the evidence." I call it that because this paragraph has nothing to do with the documents from eyewitnesses or close associates of eyewitnesses.

Why do you assume that the documents are from eyewitnesses? Are you referring to the anonymous Gospel writers wrote in the third person, which indicates the possibility of second hand, or even third hand evidence?

Brady wrote: It doesn't deal with general knowledge recorded by historians.

Please quote the historians.

Brady: It does not deal with archaeological finds.

Which archaeological evidence, that is, which archaeological evidence of the supernatural? Without claims of the supernatural, the

Bible would simply be a collection of historical events, some that are reasonably provable, and some that are not reasonably provable.

Brady wrote: And, of course, it comes nowhere near objective, inductive criteria for determining what events happened in the past.

You would even claim that Marilyn Savant and Dr. Stephen Hawking are not objective. Marilyn is not a Christian. She has an IQ of 230, and is in the Guiness Book of World Records. She has a weekly question and answer column in Sunday's Parade magazine. Steven is not a Christian, and he is widely acknowledged as being the top physicist in the world. I suggest that you refrain from such an approach. We have plenty of other things to discuss.

Brady wrote: I already dealt with Stark in my previous debate with Johnny. Nothing has changed since then. We have the eyewitness testimony of a hostile Roman historian

Which historian? Please quote him.

Brady wrote: and a Christian,

Which Christian? Please quote him.

Brady wrote: both who lived at the time and in the place where the events were occurring. They agree on the facts of what was happening in Rome at the time.

Which facts?

Brady wrote: Stark, who writes two thousand years after the fact, says they are wrong, because their testimony doesn't fit his mathematical model. For me this is a no-brainer. The rational man goes with the evidence, not against it. Mathematical models can only tell you what is likely to happen under certain circumstances, they can't ever tell what happened. For that you need the evidence.

But, enough about Stark, this is a minor point in Johnny's post. His more important point is, "it is my position that in the 1st century it is plausible that the vast majority of people flatly rejected New Testament claims of miracles, including the Resurrection of Jesus. If there were no miracles and no Resurrection, then it is to be expected that the Christian Church could not have begun to grow more rapidly until after the deaths of the supposed still living eyewitnesses, which would have been late in the first century."

Here again, Johnny seeks to go outside the evidence and avoids the actual evidence and historical methods of determining the likelihood of events based on evidence. He instead provides us his speculation. Here is the problem with his thinking: Even if most people didn't believe the miracles happened, that doesn't mean they didn't happen. The vast majority of the people never heard about most of the miracles. They had never seen the miracles, nor did they know anyone who had. Nor did they know anyone who knew someone who had. Nor did they know anyone who knew someone, who knew someone else who had seen the miracles. Nor did they have the writings of those whohad seen the events.

Johnny wrote: As Richard Carrier has said, historically very small groups of people have believed in all sorts of outlandish things, to which I will add some things even more outlandish than Christianity. You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can fool a very small group of people much of the time.

Johnny talks about small groups believing outlandish things. Let's see, the census tells that only about 5% of Americans don't believe in some form of God or Supreme Being. I guess that makes atheists and skeptics a small group, which means, according to the rest of the population, that

Atheists and skeptics believe an outlandish thing.

I said "As Richard Carrier has said, historically very small groups of people have believed in all sorts of outlandish things, to which I will add some things even more outlandish than Christianity." The key words are "have believed." As an agnostic, I don't have any beliefs regarding the origin or the universe.

Brady wrote: Johnny wrote: As good as Stark's book is, I don't need to refer to 'The Rise of Christianity' in order to have good arguments. The texts mention the feeding of the 5,000, the feeding of the 4,000, the 3,000 people who became Christians after hearing teaching by Peter, the entire town that became Christians after hearing teaching by Peter and John, and the 500 eyewitnesses. If those numbers had been much smaller, would they have been nearly as convincing? Of course not. What if the feeding of the 5,000 had been the feeding of the ten? What if the 500 eyewitnesses had been the 15 eyewitnesses? The book of Acts mentions thousands of Christian Jews. Paul mentions the 500 eyewitnesses in 1st Corinthians. Collectively the Gospels, Acts and 1^{st
Corinthians indicate a Christian Church of at least 20,000 members by 70
A.D. In Matthew Henry's Bible commentary, Henry claims that the numbers
mentioned in Acts indicate tens of thousands of believers prior to 40
A.D.}

^{Once again, this is more
speculation on Johnny's part. Thanks for sharing your opinion; do you
have any evidence from the period to back it up? No? I didn't think so.}^{Do you consider the New
Testament to be speculation? The feeding of the 5,000, the feeding of
the 4,000, the 3,000 people who became Christians after hearing teaching
by Peter, the entire town that became Christians after hearing teaching
by Peter and John, the thousands of Christian Jews mentioned in Acts,
Pauls's mention of the 500 eyewitnesses in 1st Corinthians, and Matthew
4:24, which says "And his fame went throughout all Syria: and they
brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases
and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those
which were lunatick, and those that had the palsy; and he healed
them," all indicate something completely contrary to your "The
vast majority of the people never heard about most of the
miracles."
A sizeable number of Christians
disagree with your position on the size of the 1st century Christian
Church. In 'World Christian Trends,' Christian authors David B. Barrett
and Todd M. Johnson estimate that there were 800,000 Christians in 100
A.D. I have been debating Christians at the Theology Web for months
regarding the size of the 1st century Christian Church. For instance,
James Holding, who has an impressive Christian web site at tektonics.org,
claims that there were from 100,000 - 250,000 Christians in 70 A.D. He
said that there had to be at least that many Christians in order to get
the Roman's attention.
At a web site at <http://www.christian-thinktank.com/mqfx.html>,
Christian apologist Glenn Miller quotes a scholarly source as saying
"If we take the period of four hundred years stretching from two
hundred years before to two hundred years after the birth of Christ, the
number of miracles recorded which are remotely comparable with those of
Jesus is astonishingly small. On the pagan side, there is little to
report apart from the records of cures at healing shrines, which were
certainly quite frequent, but are a rather different phenomenon from
cures performed by an individual healer. Indeed it is significant that
later Christian fathers, when seeking miracle workers with whom to
compare or contrast Jesus, had to have recourse to remote and by now
almost legendary figures of the past such as Pythagoras or Empedocles."
If Miller's source is right,
and I have no reason to believe that he isn't right, then the numerous
claims of New Testament miracles would have been the talk of the entire
Middle East.
Brady wrote: Johnny
wrote: Either Rodney
Stark et al are wrong or the claims of numbers mentioned in the Gospels,
Acts and 1st Corinthians are lies. Regarding the feeding of the 5,000
and the feeding of the 4,000, if the events actually happened, surely a
lot of those people would have become Christians. The texts say that the
people were amazed at what they saw.

Well, since Paul, Luke and the
Apostles lived in the Jerusalem in first century and experienced the
events that they speak of,

Why do you assume that they
"experienced the events that they speak of?"
Brady wrote: and
since you and Stark live two thousand years later and has no first hand
experience, I think I'll go with the people who were there. But of
course that would be the inductive, objective approach.

Of course the people were
there, but did they see miracles, including a risen Jesus? There is no
external evidence that they did so, only evidence that says what some
people believed.
Could the claim of a supposedly
risen Jesus have been checked out by everyone? Absolutely not. Paul
mentions the 500 eyewitnesses, but he knew better than to claim 50,000
eyewitnesses.
After all, too many
eyewitnesses spoil the broth of deception. Obviously, Jesus went out of
his way to make sure that the vast majority of people in the world did
not see him after he rose from the dead. Why was that?
It is interesting to note that
the major factor that determines religious beliefs is geography. A
loving, all-powerful God would not be limited by geography. Hebrews 8:6
says "But now hath he obtained a more excellent ministry, by how
much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established
upon better promises." If the covenant was better, why didn't it
come many centuries earlier, and why didn't everyone in the world get to
hear about it?
What you need to do is to
reasonably prove a God of today, not just a
God of yesterday. The best
evidence of a God of yesterday is a God of today, not the reverse. Can
you provide such evidence?
Brady wrote: Johnny
wrote: In conclusion,
there are no good reasons for anyone to assume that in the 1st century
there were anywhere near the number of Christians indicated in the
Gospels, Acts and 1st Corinthians.

Except for the reason that
those who lived through the events contradict you.

How do you know? You weren't
there.
Brady wrote: You
could be considered the poster boy for how not to do historical
investigation. Your post is filled with logical fallacies and never
addresses the evidence from the period; it merely tries to sweep it
aside and contradicts it.

My thesis is, "The only
cogent conclusion, based on the examination of the evidence by the
objective application of historical methodology, is that Jesus rose from
the dead." You have not come near touching the fringes of this
thesis, let alone overturning it. This is because you have neither dealt
with the evidence, nor do you have an objective methodology in place
that can deal with the evidence.

There is no evidence at all.
Many Christians attempt to include ordinary historical claims together
with claims of the supernatural.
However, the majority of modern
historians do not use the same criteria for examining ordinary
historical claims that they use for examining claims of the
supernatural. That makes good sense, for while the historical claim that
Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon River is of no eternal significance
whatsoever, the claim that Jesus actually rose from the dead, if true,
would have a great deal of eternal significance. Therefore, logic
dictates that the criteria for examining claims of the supernatural must
be more demanding than the criteria for examining ordinary historical
claims.
In conclusion, from Christians'
point of view, if they became skeptics and it eventually turns out that
the Bible is true, they will spend eternity in hell. On the other hand,
from skeptics' point of view, if they became Christians and it
eventually turns out that they will become dust in the ground, they will
be no worse off than before they became Christians. Therefore, skeptics
are free to follow the evidence wherever it leads completely free of
coercive influences.
Any skeptic would love to spend
eternity in a comfortable heaven if he thought that one were available.
In addition, any skeptic would love to have miracles available to help
humans if he thought that they were available.
Many Christians claim that
skeptics want to be lords of their own lives.
However, nothing could be
further from the truth. All skeptics will agree that everyone needs
oversight. Even U.S. Supreme Court justices can be impeached under
certain sets of circumstances. In addition, discipline is needed in
families, businesses and in the military. Without discipline and
oversight, we would have anarchy. All that skeptics are asking for is
evidence of a God of today, not just a God of yesterday, and Christians
are unable to provide such evidence.}

^{From
Brady 2/24/05}

^{Hi Johnny,}

^{There are so many
different points and these posts are getting long and unruly. Why don’t
we take it one point at a time, finish with one point and then go on to
the next, in a quick and timely fashion.}

^{In a previous post I wrote: In
my paper, "Atheists and the Resurrection," I point out that
most atheists or skeptics do not want to deal with the historical
argument for the Resurrection. That they run from it. We see that has
happened again. In my paper I call such arguments as Johnny has produced
"going outside the evidence." I call it that because this
paragraph has nothing to do with the documents from eyewitnesses or
close associates of eyewitnesses.

Johnny responded: Why
do you assume that the documents are from eyewitnesses? Are you
referring to the anonymous Gospel writers wrote in the third person,
which indicates the possibility of second hand, or even third hand
evidence?

I am not referring to any
documents and the problem is neither are you. Read my above quote again.
You totally missed the point. I simply pointed out that in your thesis
you make statements about history, yet you have no sources from the
period that give any indication that the points in your thesis is true.
Here is another related
statement:
I wrote in my previous post,
regarding your thesis: It
doesn't deal with general knowledge recorded by historians.

Johnny Responded: Please
quote the historians.
It is your thesis, you are the
one making the statements, and it is your job to show the support. Are
there any historians from the period or around the period and place that
support your thesis?
What I am asking for in both
these points is for you to support your thesis with something more that
“Stark said so” and “Marilyn Savant thinks I’m smart and she has
a high IQ.” I hope you realize that those don’t make up a real
argument. That is what I was trying to show you in our last round.
You seem to be under the
impression that you can do historical investigation without doing any
historical investigation.
So, is there any support for
the claims you make in your thesis or not?
Regards,
Brady}