No, I believe them because I have no reason to doubt them.
You just gave those reasons in your previous post.....................
For example, you probably think that the Bible says that God created the universe and everything in it in 6 literal days 6,000 years ago, that the earth is flat, that sort of thing. But it doesn't.
No. I realise that some bishop in medieval times "calculated" that and that nowhere in the bible it is said that such is the case.
I'm well aware of the many ways that people read the bible.
I'm also well aware of the extra ordinary claims that are not in evidence and the superstition that is found all throughout it.
Add to this that supernatural claims can't be scientifically tested and then you unscientifically conclude that the supernatural can't exist when all supernatural really means is something we don't understand and so you then conclude the supernatural can't exist, which is unscientific.
Perhaps you should not be trying to say what I claim and don't claim and instead just ask me.
There is no reason to believe the supernatural exists.
If you say that it just refers to things that we don't understand, then the only thing to be said is that we don't understand it - not that it is real.
If you can't test something you can't conclude either way
And by extension - you have no rational reason to believe it.
The point.
Like I said, once whales and squid were supernatural
Yes. So was lighting, the sun, thunder, the tides,....
And now we understand all those things and realise that the superstitious explanations people made up for them was just that: made up.
Again: the point...................
That's what happens when one is afraid of those simple words "i don't know" and instead just make things up. They end up believing false things.
That doesn't necessarily imply that the supernatural in the Bible is real, but it is possible that we just aren't aware of it.
But considering the history of things claimed to being supernatural that weren't, it is far more likely that the supernatural claims of the bible will simply go the way of the squid, the whale, thunder, the sun, lightning, etc.....
See, this is the point...
No, we can't test for the supernatural. You can't test any unfalsifiable claim.
But EVERY SINGLE TIME when phenomena were tackled that once were called supernatural, it turned out to have quite natural explanations that don't require any gods or angels or spirits or ghosts or what have you.
Not a single time, did the supernatural explanation turn out to being the correct one.
And since, as per your own admission, the supernatural claims refers to things we simply don't understand, we can conclude that claiming things to being supernatural is no more or less then an argument from ignorance.
To paraphrase Neil deGrass Tyson: "
if that is how you define the supernatural, then the supernatural is an ever-receeding pocket of scientific ignorance".
So to me, your approach to the Bible seems derived from ignorance,
You mean, my approach to the bible that you just invented, because I never told you. You just assumed. And as it turns out, you assumed wrong.
Also, by your own admission, it's the supernatural that is derived from ignorance (or "not understanding" as you called it).
in the sense that you don't really know it very well at all, and it's unscientific in that you conclude something, sort of in the name of science, which can't be tested by science itself.
You just said yourself that the supernatural can't be tested. This means there can't be evidence for it.
What is asserted without evidence, can be dissmissed without evidence.
It isn't an extraordinary claim that Jesus existed.
But it IS an extraordinary claim to say that he was/is a god, that he cheated death, that he resurected others, that he made the blind see, that he turned water into wine, etc etc etc.
In the Bible Jesus historicity is established by clearly stating the time and place he existed in in great detail
Marvel Comic's "Amazing Spiderman" does just that with Peter Parker.
By establishing the reign of secular rulers of that time and the meticulous record of Jewish chronology that points to only one possible candidate of all time. That is objective.
It's not. It's words in a book. Subjective by definition.
Amazing Spiderman mentions real places and real people as well.
All this proves is that the authors of the bible were aware of existing cities and people.
It does not prove that the protagonist was real, and most defintaly not that he is/was a god.
Just like Amazing Spiderman doesn't prove that Spiderman is real, eventhough it just as well mentions real places, people and events.
Surely you can understand that.......
I'll also add that we don't know those places and people were real
because the book mentions them. We know they are real because of
extra-biblical independent, contemporary evidence thereof.
The sheer volume of manuscripts meticulously made available of the Bible, compared to other histories is overwhelming.
Books about the bible, don't prove the bible.
The bible mentioning Jeruzalem, only proves that the authors were aware of the existance of Jeruzalem.
And we know about Jeruzalem
for other reasons then the bible mentioning it.
So you have all of these sources to be objective about with the Bible and comparatively speaking, almost nothing extant with secular histories and yet you dismiss the Bible. Objective or subjective approach?
I don't dismiss the bible fully.
Obviously there are things in the bible that are true.
I'm just not naive enough to believe that because it mentions a few real things, therefor all the rest is true as well.
Jewish historian Josephus referred to the stoning of “James, the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ.” (The Jewish Antiquities, Josephus, Book XX, sec. 200) In his Book XVIII, sections 63, 64 there is a direct reference to Jesus that is doubted by skeptics as an embellishment by Christians, and yet they acknowledge that the style and vocabulary are those of Josephus and the passage is found in all available manuscripts
Tacitus, the Roman historian, wrote: “Christus [Latin for “Christ”], from whom the name [Christian] had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus.” (The Complete Works of Tacitus (New York, 1942), “The Annals,” Book 15, par. 44.)
I'm well aware of all this.
None of it is contemporary though.
But anyhow, I already told you that I have no problems at all with a historical Jesus around which the religion was build. In fact I literally told you that I consider it quite likely. None of these passages give any credence to any of the extra-ordinary claims though.
"The creature—likely the inspiration for the legendary kraken—has been said to have terrorized sailors since antiquity, but its existence has been widely accepted for only about 150 years. Before that, giant squid were identified as sea monsters or viewed as a fanciful part of maritime lore, as in the case of a strange encounter shortly before scientists realized just what was swimming through the ocean deep." Smithsonian (
Link)
I said that they never WERE supernatural.
People
perceived them as such, but they never
were such.
I know, and that's why I think you are being unreasonable when it comes to the Bible.
That makes no sense.
You literally just agreed to the idea that the time to accept a claim, is when the claim is properly justified.
The extra-ordinary (supernatural) claims of the bible have not been properly justified.
So there is no reason to accept them as true.
I'll also add that the more extra-ordinary the claim, the more justification is needed.
An example analogy I like to use is the following:
If you tell me that you saw a movie with Jenifer Aniston yesterday, I'ld probably just take your word for it. People watch plenty of movies. Jenifer Aniston is a well known actress. She made loads of movies.
However, if you tell me that at some point she crawled out of the TV, made love to you and then returned into the TV to finish the movies.... that's when I will be raising an eyebrow or two and no longer take your word for it.
That's the equivalent of the supernatural claim. It also works for non-supernatural claims.
You could say that you ordered a pizza when the movie started. And that during the movie, it was Jenifer Aniston that delivered it and then joined you for dinner and watched the rest of the movie with you. That too, I will not just believe / accept. That too, will require some evidence for me to accept it.
Even if you live in the same town as her.
Now, if your name happens to be George Clooney and you say that you watched a movie with Jenifer Aniston... then we're back in the more believable land.
See?
How much, and what kind, of evidence is required to reasonably accept a claim, is entirely dependend on the claim.
And the claims about Jesus are SO extraordinary that
no amount of mere words would EVER suffice.