tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5071813.post3084349127479281503..comments2024-03-25T02:16:16.247-07:00Comments on Christ the Tao: The "Shrouded" Sign: Can Thomas de Wesselow explain the Rez?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5071813.post-74604433820529582812012-05-03T08:37:55.563-07:002012-05-03T08:37:55.563-07:00Rob: Oops! Did I say king?
Yes, I agree about Lu...Rob: Oops! Did I say king? <br /><br />Yes, I agree about Luke and the gospels, not only for historical reasons, but because of the kind of internal evidences I describe in Why the Jesus Seminar can't find Jesus. There's no way they quoted Jesus correctly on many occasions (as they clearly did), then got the little matter of his resurrection from the dead wrong!<br /><br />In a sense, DW supports this, by showing that John and Luke were right about the linen burial cloths. More on that later.David B Marshallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04029133398946303654noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5071813.post-26757238786193314692012-05-03T08:32:02.031-07:002012-05-03T08:32:02.031-07:00I noted one historical mistake in your writing: Pi...I noted one historical mistake in your writing: Pilate was a governor or prefect, not a king.<br /><br />In support of your critique of DW:<br /><br />Acts is very thoroughly attested. Luke gets information right that would not be expected if Acts had been written later and by someone who had never been to the places mentioned. He gives the proper titles of individuals used at the time of the events; these titles changed often, so this is telling. Luke also mentions names that make sense in context; i.e. the names in Acts reflect names used in the areas mentioned at the time. Neither of these things would be true if Acts had been written later, even if the author had gone to these areas. Titles and common names would have changed by that time.<br /><br />There is no fact that I know of that would require any book of the New Testament to be written after 70 AD. That is not to say that they all were written before 70 AD, but it is quite likely that the bulk of the New Testament was written between 40 and 70 AD. This figure includes the books written by John. At the very outside, the New Testament was complete before 100 AD.<br /><br />Now, this does not mean that there weren't glosses that may have been inserted later. However, with the wealth of documents that we have, we can be absolutely sure of about 95% of the text. Of the remaining 5% or so, no major doctrine of the church rises or falls upon these texts. Some minor doctrines, such as snake handling, are affected by this 5%. But these doctrines are minor because they do not affect salvation and they are not held by the vast majority of the church.<br /><br />By the way, my name is Rob. A Lesser Son of the King is the title of my blog. Evidently, I made this my default identity as well.Robert Lowrancehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16630708561358342140noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5071813.post-87535424333658287422012-05-02T07:59:44.818-07:002012-05-02T07:59:44.818-07:00Brian: Well, if one has independent reason to thin...Brian: Well, if one has independent reason to think miracles do sometimes happen (as a lot of people do), it's not so hard to take the evidence, allowing for complexities in historical reconstructions, more or less on face value. <br /><br />I've already explained, and you seemed to accept the explanation at least for the sake of the argument, why Jesus rising from the dead is different from "people" rising from the dead in general. So you can't argue now from mere frequencies.David B Marshallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04029133398946303654noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5071813.post-63710816466448739672012-05-01T09:22:18.469-07:002012-05-01T09:22:18.469-07:00The point I make is that nobody knows with much ce...The point I make is that nobody knows with much certainty what, if anything, happened here – and anyone who pretends they know with much certainty, whether a Christian or an atheist, is talking rubbish.<br /><br />Incorrect claims are far more frequent than people coming back from the dead after three days. So, if one is going to believe that someone came back to life after three days based on the claims alone, it must be virtually inconceivable that the claims are incorrect. In this case, the claims could very easily be incorrect, so there is no reason to believe them (based on the historical evidence alone).<br /><br />Taking this approach does not in least make it impossible for us to find out new facts about reality, although it does help us avoid mistakenly believing lots of non-facts.Brian Barringtonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11025043345722806768noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5071813.post-5395999561844549222012-05-01T06:23:04.597-07:002012-05-01T06:23:04.597-07:00Brian: By "solve," I think yes, DW means...Brian: By "solve," I think yes, DW means "explain what happened." But even more, he means "find some sort of answer to a strong Christian challenge based on excellent evidence, so our guys don't keep get thumped in these debates."<br /><br />One thing DW makes perfectly clear in these early chapters, is that the academic community has often just ignored or even shouted down the evidence, because they found the possibility that Jesus really rose from the dead embarrassing. He agrees on that point fully. He just wants to offer his fellow skeptics a plausible solution, so they can finally get the monkey off their backs, ie, colonize this stretch of history for atheism. <br /><br />Your comments are an echo of the approach David Hume tried. It doesn't work. It begs the question, and if consistently applied, would render it impossible to discover new facts about reality. You might also like to see my response to Stephen Law a couple posts back. Odd thing -- hundreds of posts under his article, and he engaged with skeptical challenges to his argument, but he seemed to simply refuse to engage with my several direct and courteous challenges.David B Marshallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04029133398946303654noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5071813.post-27762111933119161362012-05-01T03:04:55.037-07:002012-05-01T03:04:55.037-07:00It seems to me that De Wesselow is making a very f...It seems to me that De Wesselow is making a very fundamental mistake in his way of approaching this. He says,<br /><br />“Over the course of the last 150 years the failure to solve the 'Resurrection problem' has become chronic . . . there are major difficulties with every solution so far proposed, and none is generally accepted. Confounding the intellectual optimism of the Enlightenment, the secret of the Resurrection has turned out to be as elusive as the Snark … Tom Wright … makes hay out of the ongoing failure of the secularists to come up with a convincing story of their own.”<br /><br />The big mistake here, the key error, is to assume that all ancient historical “problems” can be solved i.e. to assume that we have enough reliable information or historical evidence to solve them. Our knowledge of Ancient history in particular is, on many issues, very uncertain, so on many issues the evidence, such as it is, leads one to conclude “I don’t know” or “I am not very sure at all”. This does not confound the intellectual optimism of the Enlightenment at all – it just means we need to be properly sceptical of many claims made about ancient history.<br /><br />Consider the following situation: there is a set of historical data, and, say, broadly 10 possible explanations for a given set of data, and one thinks that each of those 10 possible explanations has an approximately 10% probability of being true. What to do? Based on the evidence alone, one will not believe ANY of the explanations, since there is a 90% chance that any of the explanations are false. In this situation one simply says, “Based on the historical evidence available, we cannot determine with any degree of certainty what, if anything, exactly happened.”<br /><br />The stories of the resurrection are like that - based on the historical evidence available, we cannot determine with any degree of certainty what, if anything, exactly happened.<br /><br />“That in fact we do know what happened on Easter morning”<br /><br />No. The fact is, nobody knows what, if anything, happened. People might have various ideas and theories about it, but nobody knows with much certainty. Both Christians and “sceptics” who claim to know exactly what happened are talking rubbish.<br /><br />The resurrection accounts claim that someone rose from the dead after three days. Since people rarely if ever come back to life after three days, and since accounts are frequently incorrect, one is justified in being sceptical of the accuracy of these accounts – is it more likely that the accounts are incorrect or that someone actually rose from the dead? Well if one is looking at it from a strictly historical perspective the answer is “It’s more likely that the accounts are inaccurate”. <br /><br />So, whilst people might have other reasons for believing in the resurrection (perhaps good reasons) the historical evidence on its own is not enough to justify believing in it. At the very best it can provide part of the reason for believing the resurrection. But very few people who do not believe in the resurrection are persuaded to believe it based on the historical evidence alone.<br /><br />Think about it this way: If the historical argument is really so good, then surely the resurrection should be thought in history class, as a historical fact? But it isn’t taught like that – and even advocates of the historical argument surely don’t think the resurrection should be taught in history class as a likely historical fact.Brian Barringtonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11025043345722806768noreply@blogger.com