From Johnny  - 3/17

Brady wrote: Can you give any corroboration to Stark's estimate?

Johnny replied: You contradict yourself. In a previous post you said

Brady responded: The estimated population of the world in 100 A.D. is between 170,000,000 and 400,000,000. So, even if there were a couple of million Christians at the time my statement would still be true. Now, since you have missed every other point, I full well expect you to miss this one to. So, to try and help you, let me put it another way. I am not saying that there were two million Christians. I am just saying that IF THERE WERE, that 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 who had seen the events. Which once again proves Stark's point is not worth the paper it is written on.

The book of Acts claims that there were thousands of Christians by 40 A.D., but there is no external corroboration whatsoever for the claim. If New Testament claims of miracles, including the resurrection of Jesus, were true, the numbers were to be expected. However, if the claims were false, the early Christian Church would not have been able to begin to grow more rapidly until after the deaths of the supposed still living eyewitnesses, which would have been late in the 1st century. Under such a plausible scenario people would have said "Hey, we were there and we didn't see any miracles, and we didn't see a risen Jesus."

Brady wrote: Thanks for sharing your statement of faith. Since you have no criteria for investigating history, all this is blind faith on your part. So that you don't miss the point again, let me explain: Since you have no criteria, your claims are not conclusions based on criteria.

Get this straight. I don't need to make any claims at all. You are the claimant here. The Bible is full of original, primary claims from cover to cover. It is up to you to prove the claims, not for me to disprove the claims.

You said "Since you have no criteria for investigating history, all this is blind faith on your part. Since you have no criteria, your claims are not conclusions based on criteria." The simple truth is that all that you have is blind faith. You don't have any logical criteria whatsoever. You don't have any external evidence at all. Your internal "evidence" is preposterous. There is no evidence at all that the Gospels are independent attestations. The bottom line is this: Few people have become Christians because of how many Gospels there are. Will you claim that it takes four Gospels to make a good case for a risen Jesus, as opposed to one, two or three? If so, then you will be admitting that Matthew, Mark and Luke are not sufficient evidence that Jesus rose from the dead with adding the book of John. If not, then you should never refer to multiple, independent attestations, which of course are not provably independent at all.

Brady wrote: I tell you what, why don't you go take a couple of logic courses, then figure out historical methodology from the historians, as you keep promising you will do, and then try again. Once you get some sort of education in these subjects, perhaps we can make some progress.

Actually, since you are the claimant, it is up to you to prove that a general consensus of historians believe that Jesus rose from the dead. I know that you are well aware that there is no such consensus. Even though it is not incumbent upon me to produce a general consensus among historians, consider the following:

Rodney Stark, Ph.D., sociology, wrote a book titled 'The Rise of Christianity,' for which he received a Pulitzer Prize nomination. He is a prolific author, and he is a college professor of sociology and comparative religion. In 'The Rise of Christianity,' Stark estimates the size of the Christian Church at various times. He estimates that there were 7,530 Christians in 100 A.D. If Stark's estimate is anywhere near being reliable, then there is no doubt whatsoever that the numbers of Christians claimed in the New Testament are lies, calling into question New Testament claims of miracles, including the resurrection of Jesus. People who will tell a few lies will always tell more lies.

Stark's nomination for a Pulitzer Prize was justified. His bibliography in 'The Rise of Christianity' is 20 pages long, attesting to the fact that he has a lot of corroborative support from a good number of scholars. Consider the following:

"This book raises, simply and brilliantly, just the kinds of questions anyone concerned with early Christianity should ask." The Christian Century

"Compelling reading.highly recommended." Library Journal

"Anyone who has puzzled over Christianity's rise to dominance in the Roman Empire. must read [this book]. Here is theoretical brashness combined with disarming common sense, a capacious curiosity, and a most uncommon ability to tell a complicated story in simple prose." Wayne Meeks, Yale University

"A provocative, insightful, challenging account of the rise of Christianity." Andrew Greely, National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago

"This brilliant and highly provocative book will revolutionize the way people think about both biblical scholarship and church history..[This is a] book nobody interested in the study of religion can ignore." Irving Hexham, University of Calgary

"Exciting and stimulating, highly readable, and full of new perspectives, Rodney Stark's book will surely bring about a revolution in thinking about the growth in the numbers of Christians in the Roman world." Roger S. Bagnall, Columbia University

"There is no book quite like this one on early Christian history..[Stark's] views, stated with candor and clarity, are fresh and insightful..There is much to learn here." Robert L. Wilkin, University of Virginia

"Rodney Stark answers the question of how early Christianity became a successful religious movement with significantly greater clarity than anyone else has to date." Jeffrey K. Hadden, University of Virginia.

Stark is a careful and dedicated researcher. His bibliography is 20 pages long. Chapter 1 in 'The Rise of Christianity' deals with his statistical model for the size of the early Christian Church on various dates. He offers corroborative scholarly support from J. C. Russell, Hans Conzelmann, Robert M. Grant, Edward Gibbon, Ramsay MacMullen, Robert L. Wilken, Michael White, Robin Lane Fox, Graydon F. Snyder and Roger S. Bagnall.

I challenge you to answer the following questions, but I am pretty sure that you won't try to answer them:

1) If you discovered a cure for cancer, would you want to make it available to everyone in the world as quickly as possible?

2) Do you believe that spreading the news of the Gospels is as important as spreading the news of a cure for cancer?

3) If you had been alive in 50 A.D., and if you had had the means of immediately telling everyone in the world about the Gospels, would you have done so?

4) Do you think that it was good that God did not let everyone in the world know about the Gospels during the 1st century and allowed millions of people to die over a number of centuries without ever having heard the Gospel message?

5) Would you be upset if God had chosen to let everyone in the world know about the Gospel message in the 1st century?

6) Since God supposedly helped Noah get all of the animals into the ark, and caused Pharaoh to allow the Jews to leave Egypt, wouldn't it have also been good for him to help spread the Gospel message in a more timely manner?

7) Since millions of people have died without ever having heard the Gospel message, what difference does it make if anyone hears the Gospel message?

8) As long as you end up in a comfortable heaven, do you really care what else God does?

I get about 20,000 hits a month at my web site at www.askepticalapproach.com. I invite your readers to read my essay and e-mail me their comments regarding both the essay and our debate.

The major factors that influence religious beliefs are geography, family, race, ethnicity, gender and age, not the Holy Sprit. Regarding geography and family, 90% of the people living in South America are Roman Catholics, not including Protestants. Barry A. Kosmin and Seymour P. Lachman wrote a landmark book titled 'One Nation Under God.' They cite a wealth of documented research regarding the aforementioned factors. Billy Graham said 'One Nation Under God' is quite possibly the most comprehensive and thoughtful profile of contemporary American religious life in print. It demonstrates conclusively that America continues to be an overwhelmingly religious nation, in spite of an astonishing variety of religions and religious beliefs. Our society is in grave danger of becoming increasingly intolerant, and this study could make a major contribution to reversing this deplorable trend and renewing the spirit of genuine tolerance and respect for those of different traditions."

After the 1st century the early Christian Church did grow more rapidly, but by what means did it grow more rapidly? Consider the following:

Following are excerpts from two articles written by Joseph McCabe that can be found in their entirety at the Secular Web:

"According to the Catholic writers, and even the official liturgy of their Church, the Roman community of the first three centuries was so decked and perfumed with saints and martyrs that it must have had a divine spirit in it. Now the far greater part, the overwhelmingly greater part, of the Acts of the Martyrs and Lives of the Saints on which this claim is based are impudent forgeries, perpetrated by Roman Christians from the fourth to the eighth century in order to give a divine halo to the very humble, and very human, history of their Church.

"This is not merely a contention of 'heretics and unbelievers.' It is not even a new discovery. The legends of the martyrs are so gross that

Catholic historians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries frequently denounced them. Cardinal Baronius and Father Pagi repeatedly rejected them. Pope Benedict XIV, of the eighteenth century, a scholar who by some mischance was made a Pope, was so ashamed of the extent to which these forgeries permeate the official ritual of his Church that he entered upon a great reform; but the cardinals and monks obstructed his work, and the literature of the Church still teems with legends from these tainted sources. In fact, many of these forgeries were already notorious in the year 494, when Pope Gelasius timidly and haltingly condemned them.

"These forgeries are so gross that one needs very little historical knowledge in order to detect them. Large numbers of Roman martyrs are, like the Pope Callistus whom I have mentioned, put in the reign of the friendly Emperor Alexander Severus, who certainly persecuted none. One of these Roman forgers, of the sixth and seventh century, is bold enough to claim five thousand martyrs for Rome alone under the gentle Alexander Severus! Other large numbers of Roman martyrs are put in the reign of the Emperor Maximin; and Dr. Garres has shown that there were hardly any put to death in the whole Empire, least of all at Rome, under Maximin. The semi-official catalogue of the Popes makes saints and martyrs of no less than thirteen of the Popes of the third century, when there were scarcely more than three or four.

"No one questions that the Roman Church had a certain number of martyrs in the days of the genuine persecutions, but nine-tenths of the pretty stories which are popular in Catholic literature ... the stories of St. Agnes and St. Cecilia, of St. Lucia and St. Catherine, of St. Lawrence and St. George and St. Sebastian, and so on are pious romances. Even when the martyrdom may be genuine, the Catholic story of it is generally a late and unbridled fiction.

"A short account of the havoc which modern scholars have made of the Acts of the Martyrs is given by a Catholic professor, Albert Ehrhard, of the Vienna University, and will cause any inquiring Catholic to shudder. Dr. Ehrhard mentions a French work, L'Amphithtre Flavien, by Father Delehaye, a Jesuit, and calls it 'an important contribution to the criticism of the Roman acts of the martyrs.' It is a 'criticism' of such a nature that it dissolves into fiction all the touching pictures (down to Mr. G. B. Shaw's Androcles and the Lion) of the 'martyrs of the Coliseum.' It proves that no Christians were ever martyred in the Amphitheatre (Coliseum). The English translation of Father Delehaye's 'Legends of the Saints' (1907) gives an appalling account of these Roman forgeries. Another scholar has, Professor Ehrhard admits (p. 555), shown that 'a whole class' of these saints and martyrs are actually pagan myths which have been converted into Christian martyrs. The whole literature which this Catholic professor surveys is one mighty massacre of saints and martyrs, very few surviving the ordeal. These fictions are often leniently called 'pious fancies' and 'works of edification.' Modern charity covers too many ancient sins. These things were intended to deceive; they have deceived countless millions for fourteen centuries, and in the hands of priests they deceive millions to-day.

"The early Roman Church was a poor little sect, like any other. It had some noble-spirited martyrs during the three or four short persecutions (in two hundred and fifty years) which affected it; but it had a far larger number who either sacrificed to the gods or bought a false certificate that they had done so. It had many men and women of strict life, and still more of lax life. Its first thirty Popes were obscure men of no distinction in the Church, of no learning, who just managed to hold together their ten or twenty thousand followers until the golden days of Constantine began.

"Even the most orthodox reader will recognize the force of the modern criticism of martyr-legends when so retrograde a work as the 'Catholic Encyclopedia' is compelled to admit it. Usually its writers deny the most certain facts of science or history with an ease that must command the envy of a politician." End of quotes.

Few Christians are aware of the following, and those who are aware of it seldom admit it in public:

Elaine Pagels: For nearly 2,000 years, Christian tradition has preserved and revered orthodox writings that denounce the Gnostics, while suppressing and virtually destroying the Gnostic writings themselves. Now, for the first time, certain texts discovered at Nag Hammadi reveal the other side of the coin: how Gnostics denounced the orthodox. The 'Second Treatise of the Great Seth' polemicizes against orthodox Christianity, contrasting it with the 'true church' of the Gnostics. Speaking for those he calls the sons of light, the author says: '...we were hated and persecuted, not only by those who are ignorant (pagans), but also by those think they are advancing the name of Christ, since they were unknowingly empty, not knowing who they are, like dumb animals.'"

Larry Taylor: 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.

Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 2002:

By the 3rd century Gnosticism began to succumb to orthodox Christian opposition and persecution. Partly in reaction to the Gnostic heresy, the church strengthened its organization by centralizing authority in the office of bishop, which made its effort to suppress the poorly organized Gnostics more effective. Microsoft� Encarta� Encyclopedia 2002. � 1993-2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

In his book titled 'The Religious Quests of the Graeco-Roman World,' Christian author S. Angus, Ph.D., D.Lit., D.D., says the following:

"No one could have dreamed that the Christians, who had themselves suffered so much from persecution and protested so vehemently against the injustice and futility of persecution, would so quickly have turned persecutors and surpassed their Pagan predecessors in fanatical savagery and efficiency, utterly oblivious of the Beatitude of the Divine Master (Matt. V. 10, 44,45). It became ominous for subsequent history that the first General Council of the Church was signalized by bitter excommunications and banishments. Christians, having acquired the art of disposing of hostile criticism by searching out and burning the objectionable books of their Pagan adversaries, learned to apply the same method to the works of such groups of Christians as were not in power or in favour for the time; when this method proved unsatisfactory, they found it expedient to burn their bodies. The chained skeleton found in the Mithraic chapel at Sarrebourg testified to the drastic means employed by Christians in making the truth conquer otherwise than by the methods and exemplified by the Founder. The stripping and torture to death with oyster-shells in a Christian church and the subsequent mangling of limb from limb of Hypatia, the noblest representative of Neo-Platonism of her day, by the violent Nitrian monks and servitors of a Christian bishop, and probably with his connivance, were symptomatic and prophetic of the intolerance and fanaticism which Christianity was to direct throughout the centuries upon its disobedient members and troublesome minorities until the day - yet to dawn - when a purer, more convincing because more spiritual, Christianity gains 'the consent of happier generation, the applause of less superstitious ages.'"

From Brady - 3/21

You know Johnny, that there are several tricks that amateur debaters try when it is obvious that they are losing a debate:

1) They try changing the subject to something irrelevant to the topic.

2) They try quoting people that agree with them, hoping that nobody knows that there are just as many authorities (or more) that disagree with them.

3) They try writing pages of nonsense and hope that nobody notices that there are no real arguments in those pages.

Of course, these are all based on fallacies and, of course, you have manage commit them all in your last post.

Awhile back you agreed to work on one point at a time. In that same post you then proceeded to ignore your agreement and you addressed another half dozen or so topics. Well, we are going to go back to that agreement. We are going to cover only one point at a time. I will not respond to anything that does not directly concern the one point we are talking about and I will not leave that point until we have some sort of agreement (either voluntary agreement or involuntary agreement) on it. Once we have that, I will move to the next point in your above post.

Since you have presented so many points in your last post, I will take it on myself to select one to begin with:

Brady wrote in a previous post: Thanks for sharing your statement of faith. Since you have no criteria for investigating history, all this is blind faith on your part. So that you don't miss the point again, let me explain: Since you have no criteria, your claims are not conclusions based on criteria. Since you have no criteria for investigating history, all this is blind faith on your part. Since you have no criteria, your claims are not conclusions based on criteria.

Johnny replied: Get this straight. I don't need to make any claims at all. You are the claimant here. The Bible is full of original, primary claims from cover to cover. It is up to you to prove the claims, not for me to disprove the claims.

The fact is I didn’t ask you to make any claims, but you have been making them all on your own throughout this discussion. On other occasions you have tried this same trick. You make a claim and when you are called on it, you hide behind “I don't need to make any claims at all.” Well Johnny, it’s time to stop hiding and step up to the plate. Either put up or shut up, as they say. The claims I was referring to above goes as follows:

“My alternate theory is that 1) a man named Jesus once lived in Palestine, 2) there is no reliable evidence that he performed miracles, 3) there is no reliable evidence that he rose from the dead, and 4) after he died there are no good reasons for anyone to assume that an imposter did not take his place.

So, now that you made those claims, it is quite fair that I ask you to back them up and the burden of proof is now on you. You can take one of two routes:

1) Admit this is just a bunch of made up nonsense with no back up, or

2) Provide criteria, a baseline and the evidence for this position.

One of these two is the only acceptable answers.