Objections re-objectified

Hey Dan!  Wow! What a long retort!  I apologize if this has taken me a while to respond.

1.  I understand that the Bible was written over several centuries by many people.  You still can't use it to justify itself.  It doesn't matter if it was written by one person, or a hundred thousand people.  You can't say the Bible is correct because it says it is.  You MUST have outside evidence, of which, we just don't have.

2.  You said, "I don't think you really believe this, Mike. Do you apply this standard to all historical works of non-fiction like, say...the history books you used in school or autobiographies of people like Abraham Lincoln? If you were arrested and tried for a crime you did not commit, would you ask the judge to dismiss the testimony of a dozen eye witnesses who are willing to testify under oath that you are innocent?" 


Yes, I actually believe this.  I addressed this in my post to Cory, but I'll address it again.  If I felt that there was a discrepancy about a certain event in Lincoln's life while reading his biography... yes, I would want outside evidence of his claims.  If I didn't believe that he gave the Emancipation Proclamation, I would look for newspaper articles written in that time which talked about his speech. It's an outside source given at the time of the speech. It may actually be more accurate than Lincoln would claim himself 30 years after giving the speech.  In your courtroom example: of course I would take every possible measure to prove my innocence.  But I would absolutely use that excuse if a dozen eyewitnesses were claiming I was guilty.  But in this example, like I said in my previous post: There is a difference between courtroom "Proof" and "actual proof".  We are talking about what's true, not what people THINK is true.  Something is either true or it isn't, and it doesn't matter how many people believe it, that doesn't make it true.


3. You said, "By this line of reasoning, would you not have to then conclude that no scientist today really knows anything about anything because they argue, debate over thetheory du jour? You seem to be arguing that 'because there is debate, there can be no truth.'" There is clearly a difference between what story is to be considered true and what is to be considered myth, and what theory is backed by evidence and what theory isn't backed by evidence.  You are making a false analogy. You are making a comparison where there just isn't one to be made.  If the debate was about "What do we have EVIDENCE for, and what don't we have evidence for."  And "whatever actually has evidence goes in, and the rest is left out."  But that's not why things were left out. They were left out for the literary purposes you posited, which is not evidence based.


4. You said, "The key words in this objection, though, are "most likely". Most likely based upon what? This theory, and that's really all it is, has no compelling evidence to support it that I've ever seen, and it completely ignores the substantial differences between the account of Christ's life and the ancient legends/fables that are claimed to be their antecedents. If you'd like to discuss specific evidence to support this claim, I'd be more than happy to entertain it, but as it stands right now the topic bears no further comment."  
I gave you the example of Jesus' descent into hades.  I could give you the example of Jesus turning water into wine as an example of proving he's better than Dionysus (also known as Bacchus) the Greek god of wine who A. was born of a god and moral woman, B. Was killed as a Martyr only to come back through resurrection. C. His followers drank wine and ate bread which they believed became his blood and flesh.  I can continue making comparisons of things attributed to Jesus with things attributed to the gods that came before him.  I can also do the same with Christianity in general.  I don't know what more proof you need.  I would suggest you look into it yourself. Here is a Wikipedia article about Jesus compared to other gods.


It's true that these may just be similarities.  But the difference between the similarities of the god stories and the scientific theories is that the god stories came hundreds of years before Christianity ever did.  The people had plenty of time to have heard the stories of Dionysus, RA, Mythra, Krishna, and Horus.  Have you ever heard of, "The passion of Osiris"?  In making a comparison to Jesus' ability to hit the mark in terms of prophecy, there are just too many similarities for me to consider this to be a coincidence.


5. You said, "b) As I've already stated, the Bible was written by eye witnesses during the lifetime of other eye witnesses, and the apostles actually encouraged people to check out the story for themselves (1 Corinthians 15:1-11) just as Paul's traveling companion, Luke the physician did in writing his Gospel (John 1:1-4)." You are saying that the Bible was written by people who knew people that saw it?  Sorry, but I've played the telephone game before, I know how that works out.  By the way, let me tell you what happened to a friend of a friend of mine *insert urban legend here*.


"c) Of the 12 apostles (Judas was replaced by Paul), all but one of them (John) were murdered for their testimony (see http://poptop.hypermart.net/howdied.html). If what you are saying is true, then 11 men went from utter cowards, running when Jesus was arrested (Matthew 26:56) and cowering in a locked room "for fear of the Jews" after his crucifixion (John 20:19,20) to dying for their testimony that Christ has risen from the dead even though, as you say, they knew they were lying the whole time. " Well.. for one, we don't know how true this story is.  And 2. I've heard from Cory that you're not LDS.  Do you take that when Joseph Smith's didn't confess to making up the church on his deathbed as proof that the LDS Church is true? Just because someone doesn't confess to making it up doesn't mean they weren't wrong.  As far as we know, they believed every word of what was preached and were still wrong.


Your numbers kind of died off after #5, but I'm going to keep that going.


6. Here's an article about the Roman censuses of that time period.  Luke is not only wrong about Joseph having to go to Bethlehem.  He's also wrong about what time period the census was taken.


"I have a friend who was born in Okinawa, Japan because his dad was in the military; but not long after his birth, his family came back to the State of Washington. Is my friend a liar for saying that he's from Washington when he was clearly born in Japan? Or is he a liar for saying that he was born in Japan when he clearly has spent nearly all of his life in Washington?" Your friend is not a liar, but he's ALSO not traveling to Japan to take the census there.  I was born in Virginia, but I tell people I'm from Utah, because that's where I spent the majority of my life.  When I take the census, I take it where I live.  That's the point.  The whole point of the census is to tell about current demographics in our country.  If I traveled to Virginia to take the census, then it would skew not only Virginia's findings, but Utah's as well.  Why would Joseph travel to Bethlehem to take the census when it would clearly skew the numbers for both Bethlehem and Nazareth?  It just doesn't make sense.


7. "The discrepancy between Matthew's and Luke's genealogies comes from their starting/ending points. Matthew, writing to demonstrate that Jesus is the promised Messiah, demonstrates Christ's right to be called the King of the Jews (as a descendant of David)--it's his legal ancestry as the adopted son of Joseph. Luke's genealogy in chapter 3 of his gospel likely traces Jesus' lineage back through Mary all the way back to Adam, but there are other possibilities as well. I've only just now skimmed it, but an article on Wikipedia discusses a half-dozen or so explanations for the discrepancy."  You are admitting that there's a discrepancy, which is all the point I was trying to make. Obviously you understand that there is room for error in the Bible.  And since we can't know how many errors they are, we can't assume anything is absolutely true. There is obviously an explanation for the error, which you linked to, but it is obvious proof that the Bible isn't 100% accurate.


Well, thanks Dan for the spirited debate!  You and Cory are certainly keeping me on my toes!


-Mike