Not every instance of the Hindu milk miracle has been scientifically explained, so your skepticism seems hasty.
Not every instance? So some aspects of the statue drinking milk can be explained, but other aspects of the statue drinking milk can't be explained? Makes no sense.
The Buddhist miracles definitely did have eyewitnesses. How else could we have written stories testifying to their validity?
Siddhartha Guatama never performed any miracles, and he was the founder of the religion. He was not divine, and his existence was contingent, so where would these miracles come from? Makes no sense.
As for Mohammed, the Quran itself is considered a miracle, since it was divinely inspired.
Makes no sense.
However, Muslim tradition has it that he committed miracles, so your objection seems rather flimsy. Being an atheist, I can dismiss all of these claims out of hand, but you really need to put at least as much effort into refuting them as you have to refuting allegations of Christian miracles.
It is common knowledge that Muhammad never performed miracles in the Quran, Cop.
Actually, now that you bring it up, yes. The bodies of those crucified for treason were usually not returned to the families.
And where has it ever been argued that Jesus' body was returned to his family?
Nevertheless, the tomb was originally the site of the most important miracle ever witnessed. So where is the tomb? Did they think it unimportant to preserve the location? Surely someone must have realized that the location would be significant to future generations.
Cmon now, cut the crap. Even if the bible recorded the exact location of Jesus' tomb, you would be on here saying "How do we know that this is the location of the tomb??? Just because the bible says it is doesn't make it true". The same way you are raising these objections and doubts about other things, this whole "tomb location" business would be added amongsts the other list of things you are skeptical about. So don't make it seem as if the location of the tomb is this big missing link between your belief and non-belief.
OK, then tell us who wrote the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Peter, and the Gospel of Mary? After all, we have exactly the same evidence that they were written by the people named in their titles, yet they never made it into canon.
No we don't have the same evidence that those other Gospels were written by the people named in their titles. The early Church apparently felt as if these books were uninspired and I happen to agree. Peter was one of Jesus' right hand men, and everyone knows this...so why would they purposely not include Peter's gospel in the canon when his name would certainly carry more weight than Mark or Luke...and Thomas' name would also carry more weight than Mark and Luke, so why wasn't his gospel included, because the early Church rendered it uninspired.
Indeed, where did all the
apocryphal gospels come from?
From men that the church thought were uninspired by God.
As for your claim that "it was unanimous that the disciple Matthew wrote...", let's just leave aside the fact that Matthew wasn't a disciple, but an alleged apostle
Alleged? No, he was.
, and ask: Which group of people were "unanimous" in supporting that decision? It certainly isn't a unanimous opinion of Bible scholars today. You appear to be relying on tradition, not scholarly opinion, for your "unanimity".
I am relying on what the devout believers of the early church said, not people who are making educated guesses some 2,000 years later. There is no known writings of the early church bickering about who wrote the Gospels. They purposely included the book of Matthew because according to them, it was written by Matthew, tax collector, and disciple of Jesus. They said that of the 12 disciples, two of them wrote Gospels about Jesus, and of all of the 12, one had a disciple named Mark that wrote a Gospel about Jesus, and one man named Luke who was a companion of Paul (former skeptic), wrote a Gospel about Jesus. So of the four Gospels, two weren't even authored by disciples of Jesus, so obviously there is nothing to lie about....now why is that so hard to believe/accept?
Good question. Where did those names come from? Ehrman provides a detailed discussion of it in Jesus, Interrupted, but the bottom line is we don't know why they were given those names.
Correction; some people don't ACCEPT the names that were given.
He felt that using those names helped to convey an air of authenticity to the accounts, but they were basically used as stories to evangelize a specific theological school. Mark isn't so concerned with Jesus' fulfillment of biblical prophecies, but Matthew was. So Matthew took a lot of material from Mark (sometimes verbatim), but he modified it to work in stories of how Jesus was proving his bona fides by fulfilling prophecies.
Well Mark was a disiple of Peter, and last I checked, Peter would be a good source to get information from, considering he was Jesus' right hand man and all. Second, the book of Matthew has wayyy more chapters than Mark does, so there is only so much "relying on Mark" that could have been done.
Each canonical Gospel actually seems to have different theological lessons to convey. That's why there were rival gospels in the first place--to establish a specific school of thought on the significance of Christ and what his ministry was about. Different authors had different perspectives and beliefs. And they embellished the stories in different ways.
So what? If every canonical Gospel was exactly the same, word for word, we wouldn't need all four now, would we? Each wrote from a different perspective, as you said, but nevertheless all four agree that Jesus lived, was crucifed, buried, and rose from the dead 3 days later.
Well, we also have letters that most scholars believe were forgeries but nevertheless made it into canon. There are various theories as to why or how Paul's name got attached to them, but they stand as evidence of how easy it was to confuse people.
Easy to confuse people? Paul became converted after Jesus spoke to him personally. He wasn't going by what he was told from others (at first).
As for the letters that most do think were authentically written by Paul, they really contain almost nothing at all of the canonical Gospel stories. Paul was strangely silent on the life of Jesus. Or, what he did say wasn't something that Christians wanted to preserve, because it contradicted their beliefs. Who knows?
Paul may have been silent on the life of Jesus, but he wasn't silent on the Resurrection of Jesus. The point was not to talk about Jesus' life, but his Resurrection, and also how we should live our lives.
Actually, both Tacitus and Josephus were writing many decades after the death of Jesus.
Wait a minute, this is funny lol. "They had no way to know or verify what Christians were saying, because they were writing many decades after the death of Jesus"....yet, scholars of today act as authorites on matters concerning history and write books CENTURIES later after most events that they write about...and yet in a above quote you were telling me about the "scholarly" opinion of today? Taxi cab fallacy.
They had no way to know or verify what Christians were saying
Wait a minute once again, Jospheus work was called
Antiquities of the Jews, and he lived during a time at which the early Christians were being persecuted and killed by the Roman emperor Nero, so Jospheus knew EXACTLY what Christians were saying, so you are just completely wrong.
, but their writings do testify to the existence of people who worshiped Christ.
Wait a minute, so their writings aren't good enough to "know or verify what Christians were saying", but their writings are good enough to "testify to the existence of people that worshipped Christ". Makes no sense. Second, you do a horrible job of trying to downplay the fact that each one mentions refers to Jesus and speak of him as a man that existed in the first century AD.
Worse yet, many scholars question the authenticity of some of the passages that reference Christ.
Yeah the famous interpolation passage regarding the reference of Jesus in Jospehus' work. If you omit the interpolation, you still have the historical Jesus. No harm done here.
That does not even begin to explain how your God is distinguished from all those gods you believe to be false.
Yes it does. If my God is the Judeo-Christian God, then how can it not?
The problem is that the false gods have worshipers that are equally convinced of the existence of their gods. They have their own scriptures and "theistic thinkers". Your God is not unique in that respect. What makes him more believable? What makes all of those other people wrong and you right? All you've said so far is "I'm convinced". So are people who disagree with you, so that doesn't sound very persuasive.
As I said, the arguments for the historicity of the Resurrection of Christ. If that is true, then I don't need to look any further than Christianity.
