Why don't Theist's admit that there's no evidence for God?

[Enai de a lukal]

Or another one- suppose I want to check whether there have been any deer in my yard; I go outside and look for tracks, droppings, scrapings, etc. If there is an absence of evidence (of any deer), I will likely conclude that there probably have been no deer, yes?

 

[idav]

Or another one- suppose I want to check whether there have been any deer in my yard; I go outside and look for tracks, droppings, scrapings, etc. If there is an absence of evidence (of any deer), I will likely conclude that there probably have been no deer, yes?

I understand what your getting at but it doesn't make good proof. Just cause you have ninja stealth deer in your yard that don't leave any evidence!

 

[nash8]

Um, no, try reading it again, and do it more slowly this time. The lack of evidence of a burglary is sufficient proof that no burglary occurred. If not, tell me how you would confirm whether a burglary occurred if not by checking to see if anything was missing, any broken windows or doors, etc.?

On the other hand lack of evidence can also be used to show significant proof that a crime did happen.

 

[I.S.L.A.M617]

However lately you have become a commentator.

Because arguing with you is like squeezing peanut butter out of a rock... You've already convinced yourself that your beliefs are the absolute truth and no amount of evidence or fact will dissuade you from taking that view.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

the Gospel writings were like a newsflash compared to other Ancient accounts, as you yourself admit.

Contrary to want you might think, I don't argue with you or anybody for the hell of it. I'm not going to suddenly switch my evaluation of the evidence because of you:

Second, what "original writings" (autographs) do you think we have at all? You seem to be assuming that there are a fair number of texts written by other ancient authors for which we have the originals. Nothing could be further from the truth:

In fact, the number of texts we have make the task of the NT textual critic a joke compared to textual criticisms in classics. In the 4th edition of The Texts of the New Testament by Bruce Metzger and Bart Ehrman , we find: "the textual critic of the New Testament is embarrassed by the wealth of material. Furthermore, the work of many ancient authors has been preserved only in manuscripts that date from the Middle Ages (sometimes the late Middle ages), far removed from the time at which they lived and wrote. On the contrary, the time between the composition of the books of the New Testament and the earliest extant copies is relatively brief. Instead of the lapse of a millenium or more, as is the case of not a few classical authors, several papyrus manuscripts of portions of the New Testament are extant that were copied within a century or so after the composition of the original documents."

Luke was the companion of Paul

If we accept the consensus view that Luke-Acts are by the same author, and further that Luke did travel in Paul's company, all that follows is he was alive then.

I mean how could you not record the death of Paul in the book of Acts when he was one of the main men (if not the main man) in the narrative.

If Acts were a life of Paul, then we might be expecting an account of his death. But Acts neither records the death of Peter nor of Paul, the two central figures. About a 3rd of the entire book of Acts is speeches, not descriptions of historical events. Like many ancient historians, the author is less concerned with a person's life and more about using particular methods to encapsulate, articulate, and render more salient particular events. Lengthy speeches do this.

Paul was certainly alive during the events in the book Acts as the book ends with him being under house arrest.

Acts ends with "He lived there two whole years" and "he welcomed all the ones coming to him". The verb "lived" and the verb "welcomed" are in two different tenses: aorist and imperfect, respectively. The aorist does not, strictly speaking, refer to a time in and of itself, but rather (like all Greek tenses) a way to construe an event. In this case the combination of the two tenses is clear: The entirety of what took place during these two years (the welcoming) is over. McKay, in A New Syntax of the Verb in in NT Greek, renders the line "he remained for two whole years in his own rented accommodation- and then ceased to do so" (sect. 4.4.1).

In other words, Acts ends by describing what Paul had finished doing, so we know that his two years are over and done with, yet we are not told what happened next.
Your claim that we should expect to hear if Paul died holds true about any statement about Paul's activities when Acts was written. If Paul was alive at that point, why are we not told what he's up to? Why are we only told what he was doing and has finished doing, rather than what he is doing?

And if Luke is “dependent on Mark and probably also on Matthew” as even you just said

I quoted two authors who said that. This is a minority view and one I don't hold.

There weren’t any competing views on the authorship of the Gospels

John's gospel itself gives us a competing view of its authorship:
"This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true"

Who is "we"?

I will go with what the early church fathers say

The church father who said Matthew wrote a gospel was Papias. Papias also tells us that Mark used to write what Peter said about Jesus. The only reason we know this is through quotes provided by Eusebius, who calls him an idiot (sphodra...mikros hon ton noun) right after recounting another tradition that Papias wrote of.

the testimony of the church fathers

Sure. Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 3.3.4, it states..

"Matthew published his own Gospel..."

First, it isn't 3.3.4. Second, whether Irenaeus got his information from Papias' writing directly or through another source, he is relating a tradition that Papias did: a certain Mark was the interpreter (hermeneutes) of Peter. Only Papias never says Mark wrote Peter's preaching. In fact, he deliberately contrasts what Mark did with what Matthew did. According to Papias' source, an unnamed "elder", Mark wrote down some of the things he remembered Peter saying about Jesus without any order/narrative. It is for this reason, this unordered jotting down of memories, that Matthew arranged the sayings of Jesus in the Hebrew language (Matthaios men oun Hebraidi dialekto ta logia sunetaxato).

So not only does our earliest account say that this Mark didn't write a narrative but jotted down some memories of what he had heard, but that it was because Mark didn't write a narrative (an ordered account) that Matthew did, and did so in Hebrew (or Aramaic).

If a manuscript has been copied various times in 7 different languages, and each copy in one language harmonizes with the other one, that would make the manuscript reliable especially if you have an early source at which the material was copied from.

1) This never happened as far as we know. Usually, a manuscript was copied either in the same language or into another, but very rarely can we trace more than manuscript families when dealing with other languages.
2) Take a look at the differences in modern English translations. They look fairly minor, no doubt. That's because I can translate just about any line from the Greek NT into English in a great variety of ways. The reverse is true as well. So how do you check for this harmonization?
3) What determines reliability is how closely different manuscript traditions/families are related to one another and to the most important manuscripts (Vaticanus and Sinaiticus).

Ok well explain why they disagree.

You mean explain to you how the gospels are dated? Do you have any idea how much you are asking? They are dated based on everything from geographical terms to the ways Jewish terms and/or laws required explanations. The literature on this topic is vast. Thousands upon thousands of books and papers going back a century and more. I cannot cover the evidence in a post, because just listing the evidence would be meaningless without context, and supplying context would mean writing a book.

So please

Your entire basis is simply that after assuming that you know who wrote the gospels, they could have lived long enough to write later. A central issue for dating the synoptics is that it is impossible for them to be independent. There are too many lines that are too similar for this (for details, learn Greek). So first you'd have to solve the synoptic problem, as accepting the consensus would mean that Matthew (who knew Jesus) used what Mark (who didn't know Jesus) had written. If you'd been a disciple of Jesus, and wrote an account of Jesus' sayings and deeds, would you rely on a text by someone who didn't even know the guy?

How do you know?

The same why I know that when the author of Luke states that it was in Antioch that Christians were first called Christians, I know that the original word was not Greek but Latin. It is often extremely difficult to translate a text from one language into another, especially if the two are different types of languages. As an example, we have remnants of the tetragrammaton (YHWH/יהוה&#8206 in Greek (e.g., ΙΑΩ&#913. Only there is no "y" sound in Greek. ΙΑΩΑ might be pronounced "ee-ah-oh-ah", nothing like "yah-way". That's just sounds. In Hebrew, the basic verb form has grammatical gender and the nominal system is built off of consonant triple. In Greek, verbal forms combine tense/aspect with mood, something Hebrew does not have. We can look at the LXX to see how evidence of translation shows up, as well as semitic translations of the NT (e.g., syriac).

 

[1robin]

Because arguing with you is like squeezing peanut butter out of a rock... You've already convinced yourself that your beliefs are the absolute truth and no amount of evidence or fact will dissuade you from taking that view.

So you have run up the white flag but that was a little embarrassing so you had to figure out some way to make it a flaw concerning me that forced you to give it up. These rationalizations are quite common to non-theists and liberals, though the liberals usually like to claim some false moral high ground in the mix somewhere. The flaw in your carefully constructed punt is that the claims I responded to of yours were not made to me and still contained no evidence. You have just went to assertion mode in almost all your recent posts with everyone. It is like you set out to wage war with something you do not like and ran out of ammunition but won't give up the fight because emotion won't allow you to.

 

[I.S.L.A.M617]

So you have run up the white flag but that was a little embarrassing so you had to figure out some way to make it a flaw concerning me that forced you to give it up. These rationalizations are quite common to non-theists and liberals, though the liberals usually like to claim some false moral high ground in the mix somewhere. The flaw in your carefully constructed punt is that the claims I responded to of yours were not made to me and still contained no evidence. You have just went to assertion mode in almost all your recent posts with everyone. It is like you set out to wage war with something you do not like and ran out of ammunition but won't give up the fight because emotion won't allow you to.

The claim you were talking about (post #481 that I responded to with #491) was already addressed sufficiently by another member (post #486); I didn't feel the need to repeat everything he just said in order to appease you, so instead I just gave my commentary...

 

[1robin]

The claim you were talking about (post #481 that I responded to with #491) was already addressed sufficiently by another member (post #486); I didn't feel the need to repeat everything he just said in order to appease you, so instead I just gave my commentary...

You must appease me. If not then why get out of bed? If you do not appease me we will say neigh to you again? Do you know the reference?

 

[I.S.L.A.M617]

You must appease me. If not then why get out of bed? If you do not appease me we will say neigh to you again? Do you know the reference?

LOL Monty Python

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

[/font][/color]

That's not the same as 70 A.D., and wasn't John supposed to be the latest written book of the gospel Canon?

I am referring to earliest fragment/copy of the book of John, not the original copy. Remember, you asked about the earliest copies. And yes, the consensus is that John was the last Gospel to be written.

That's what I was saying, the different authors list different genealogies. and what are the reasons in your opinion, for different genealogies? I have seen many explanations, but none so far that I deem as the most plausible.
Four Gospels: Comparative Charts

Well, why do you not find the reasons plausible? Norman Geisler offered responses to the genealogy dilemma in his book “When Critics Ask”.

For starters, and I'm at work right now so I can't really cite more sources, but more specifically the gnostic aspects of Christianity, especially considering many similarities between gnostic thought and the gospel of St. Thomas that aren't mentioned at all, or nearly as prominently as they are in other gospels.

Huh?

My view was that Chrisitianity was way deeper than we view it today. Today we tend to focus on the moral code first, which I believe was secondary to other more important ideas that Jesus taught.

Love for others was first and foremost, and what Jesus taught to everyone. Moral code was what he taught to a closer group of his "followers", and lastly an esoteric inner knowledge about reality and ourselves he taught only to those who had the "eyes to see, and ears to hear". This aspect of inner knowledge of oneself, as well as the workings of world around you, where what the early church fathers sought to oppress. After all they say knowledge is power, and those in power generally don't want those without power to gain it. Thus the oppression of early gnostic christianity.

I applaud you for giving me your opinion on the matter.

That is a huge "if" in my opinion. First of all you would have to assume that the people who copied the "originals" had no motives in adding and or subtracting what suited their needs.

I mean hell; if that is the case you can throw the concept of history right out the window. When you talk about having motives and adding and subtracting what suits one’s needs, if that is the case then you would have to question history in general and everything you/we “think” is true may be a fabrication from people who had ulterior motives. If you use the same standards that you use to judge the history of Christianity and applied it to everything else in history, how can you trust anything?

If the early church fathers were the ones doing the copying, it would be obvious that many of them, such as Iranaeus would want to suppress the gnostic aspects of Christianity.

I am still trying to figure out would that have to do with him stating who wrote the Gospesls?

Then you have to realize that each language that a book is translated can take away important details, due to the lack of a particular word to exactly describe the concept being presented. The general story would probably end up being the same, but the suttle nuances which is the parts that I'm speaking of, would most likely be lost.

But as I said before, these differences are minor and it wouldn’t affect doctrine. That is why all of the “good” bibles will alert the readers at the bottom of the page of the different variations, but none of these variations affect any central doctrine.

See the wiki article on Essenes, for an my view on that. They had very similar practices before the time of Jesus. And the Christos that you speak of within gnosticsim is not a specific person, but rather a mindset and or universal conciousness that a person can hope to achieve through "gnosis". The reasons you listed are criminal reasons lol.

Ok but he specifically said “Christians”. And if they had very similar practices before the time of Jesus and it was nothing new, why would he mention it? I am trying to be as unbiased as I can on the matter, and when I read it doesn’t appear to me as if he is just merely mentioning something of the norm happening.

There is no references to what "verses" they were chanting, and it may be obvious to you that they were chanting some part of the NT, but to me it's not so obvious.

Well, if they were Christians, it is apparent that the verses were consistent with the doctrine of Christianity.

The Christos in gnosticism is similar to a God, and there is definitely also the possibility they believed that Jesus had achieved the Christos, and thus there prayers might have been to him directly, but only as a physical point of directed focus that they may worship the universal conciousness that he contained.

He states that they WERE CHRISTIANS. Christians are followers of JESUS CHRIST, nash. All of this wild speculation you are giving me is completely unwarranted.

And I would agree with the accurate portrayal of Jesus, at least on one level, but it is the deeper levels that I think the gospels are missing that I am concerned with. The basic "outer shell" of Christianity for the most part is portrayed fairly accurately within the gospels, it is the teachings that he taught to only certain members of the group that I think are being left out. There are many times in the Bible that talk about Jesus speaking only to certain disciples or groups of people, even times when he spoke to Mary and the other disciples got mad, or when he spoke to Peter alone.

And?

It does, if gnostic Christians were the ones who wrote down the first gospels. His oppisition to the early gnostic Christian church would have made it a lot easier for him to leave this information out. Or who knows, maybe Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John were gnostic in a sense and he just left out the fact that they were gnostic, but accurately represented who wrote the gospels.

That is a lot of speculation you got going on there, nash.

My question is, what is the Christian teaching? What were Paul's motives? Did he want to accurately portray the totallity of Christianity, or did he just want Christianity to spread because it had a good core message and moral code?

Um, nash…Paul was originally a persecutor of Christians. So if he had any motives, it would be to rid the earth of all Christians. It wasn’t until he saw Jesus that he coverted to Christianity. So there would be no reason for Paul to make a complete 360 turn if he didn’t have sufficient reasons for doing so.

I agree with you that the belief/concpet of Christianity dates back to 5-10 years after the ressurection, but what I'm trying to argue is that we have no idea what the core beliefs/concepts of Christianity were besides a strong moral code, and love for others.

In essence, that is what true love is. High moral standards, and love for others.

We have no evidence that Jesus believed he was the son of God incarnate

We have plenty.

, and we even have verses where he denies it, or tells his disciples not to worry about that.

Show me.

My argument is that the gnostic part of Christianity has been all but left out of mainstream Christianity today, and my personal belief is this is the part that was held dear by Jesus himself.
And my argument to that, is that Christianity was different at it's beginnings amonst the people, than it would become later as the early church fathers got a hold of it. Let me ask you this, what was the general socioeconomic background of the majority of the early church fathers?

It seems as if you are basing your whole argument on the Gnostic part of Christianity lol. Is that the hold up?

 

[I.S.L.A.M617]

We have plenty.

opcorn: Go on...

 

[FranklinMichaelV.3]

You don't trust it. You take it as a fact based on the evidence that you are given. Look at how history is taught in the U.S. You would think that we were the only ones kicking Nazi butt during World War II...but you do a little diggy and you start to see that other countries played major roles in the victory, countries like the USSR.

 

[1robin]

LOL Monty Python

There is hope.

 

[1robin]

You don't trust it. You take it as a fact based on the evidence that you are given. Look at how history is taught in the U.S. You would think that we were the only ones kicking Nazi butt during World War II...but you do a little diggy and you start to see that other countries played major roles in the victory, countries like the USSR.

Yes and the USSR did it with our planes, tanks, and trucks. It was not the armies we sent in WW2 that made the big difference though it was substantial. We were once we got ripping building more military equipment that the rest of the world combined on either side. Any other single nation besides maybe Great Britain for a year when it stood alone (but with our equipment) could have left the allies and fought with Hitler and we would have still won. We sent so much stuff to Britain that it was a joke that we were going to sink the Island and only the barrage balloons kept it afloat. I have seen actual logistics reports from 1944 and you can't imagine the scale at which our industries were operating. We produced cargo ships alone at the rate of one launched per day and they were 400ft plus long. In 1945 we could have taken over the world but instead rebuilt those that attacked us instead and protected them. The US is not perfect but it is the (even still) the most powerful and benevolent nation in human history. Are the guy from Haiti?

 

[FranklinMichaelV.3]

Yes and the USSR did it with our planes, tanks, and trucks. It was not the armies we sent in WW2 that made the big difference though it was substantial. We were once we got ripping building more military equipment that the rest of the world combined on either side. Any other single nation besides maybe Great Britain for a year when it stood alone (but with our equipment) could have left the allies and fought with Hitler and we would have still won. We sent so much stuff to Britain that it was a joke that we were going to sink the Island and only the barrage balloons kept it afloat. I have seen actual logistics reports from 1944 and you can't imagine the scale at which our industries were operating. We produced cargo ships alone at the rate of one launched per day and they were 400ft plus long. In 1945 we could have taken over the world but instead rebuilt those that attacked us instead and protected them. The US is not perfect but it is the (even still) the most powerful and benevolent nation in human history. Are the guy from Haiti?

What was the point of the entire rant? Did I say that the U.S. Contributed nothing? And yes I am the guy from Haiti.

 

[1robin]

What was the point of the entire rant? Did I say that the U.S. Contributed nothing? And yes I am the guy from Haiti.

Military history (I am a veteran) and an amateur military historian is something I look for an excuse to post about. If it was not relevant then ignore it but claims concerning the "great Satan" are as frequent as they are inaccurate and I assumed that is where yours were going in a less theological sense. The US was 80% of what won prevented the world from succumbing to tyranny. France was a speed bump and Britain and the USSR were using borrowed US equipment.

 

[FranklinMichaelV.3]

Military history (I am a veteran) and an amateur military historian is something I look for an excuse to post about. If it was not relevant then ignore it but claims concerning the "great Satan" are as frequent as they are inaccurate and I assumed that is where yours were going in a less theological sense. The US was 80% of what won prevented the world from succumbing to tyranny. France was a speed bump and Britain and the USSR were using borrowed US equipment.

The US Was 80% of what won the war?

So ignoring

Hitlers own incompetence and poor strategizing.

The U.S.S.R's massive man power

The campaigns on the East

Don't get me wrong I would not at all say that the U.S. did not contribute, we certainly did shift the tide for the war.

But 80%?

You assume to much, about "The Great Satan" which is not at all where I was going to go. Point is that what you know about history shouldn't be given as truths but facts. Facts can change with evidence. History as well changes as more evidence is provided.

But I already know where you fall on things in the world anyway so I'm not surprised you would think that.

 

[I.S.L.A.M617]

I wanna know where the specific 80% number came from.

 

[1robin]

I wanna know where the specific 80% number came from.

My head. After 30 years of research. It was not meant to be hyper accurate but only indicative of the massive lopsided contributions we made in that war. We built more (super) carriers in one year than the entire rest of the world had of all types for the entire war combined. All the other major allies combined would have been dead in 1942 without us. What percentage do you assign to that? Beyond the spitfire and hurricane pilots (in the battle of Britain alone) and Hitler's stupidity we needed nothing else to have won that war all on our own. The only thing that exceeded the Wehrmacht's professional lethality was our vastly more lethal productivity and technology. In fact only the Atlantic saved us for long enough to come up to speed, but once there nothing could have stopped us.

 

[I.S.L.A.M617]

My head. After 30 years of research. It was not meant to be hyper accurate but only indicative of the massive lopsided contributions we made in that war. We built more (super) carriers in one year than the entire rest of the world had of all types for the entire war combined. All the other major allies combined would have been dead in 1942 without us. What percentage do you assign to that? Beyond the spitfire and hurricane pilots (in the battle of Britain alone) and Hitler's stupidity we needed nothing else to have won that war all on our own. The only thing that exceeded the Wehrmacht's professional lethality was our vastly more lethal productivity and technology. In fact only the Atlantic saved us for long enough to come up to speed, but once there nothing could have stopped us.

I don't deny that the US played the largest role in winning World War II... I wouldn't try to assign a percentage to their contribution, though. Certain people might say you were making a claim based on nothing and request a source of some kind that states 80% of the work was done by the US, and then dismiss it and ask you to provide a source again. But you wouldn't know anyone like that, would you?