Evidence

Hi Mike,

Thank you for the quick turn-around. I'm sorry I couldn't reply in like time, but I generally like to "sit on" things for a couple of days to think over what my interlocutor says and evaluate not only his arguments but also my own position (this is partly why I don't get involved in many real-time discussions of this nature--I need time to mull things over a bit. :-) At any rate, I'm very appreciative of the time you're putting into this discussion and the respectful manner in which you frame your responses. I'm not sure whether to apologize for my long response--I try to be very thorough to minimize the volleying, and my concern is that if my responses are too terse then that will leave more room for misinterpretation (e.g. "Oh now he's getting snippy!") and then we have to go 'round and 'round to clarify points; so it seems to be somewhat safer to be a little on the verbose side. *shrug*

Again, I'll address your objections point by point.

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.

I'm having a hard time with this, Mike. On one hand you concede that the 66 books of the Bible were penned by ~40 different authors over the course of ~1,500 years, yet your assertions belie your concession of these facts because they either presume collusion between the authors or some sort of conspiracy to edit all 39 books of the Old Testament and 27 of the NT into harmony with one another. The former is quite literally impossible given the time frame we're talking bout and the latter is rather preposterous in the light of the manuscript evidence against that argument. So really, it's actually quite arbitrary to discount the validity of 66 books just because they are bound under one cover.

Secondly, nowhere in my post did I say that the Bible is correct because it says it is (though I agree with the statement). But even if I had, the reverse argument can also be applied here: "The Bible is not false just because it says it is true." If it claims to be true and it demonstrates itself to be historically reliable and internally consistent, what rational reason would we have to discount its testimony of itself? But this is really something of a straw man anyway. What I am arguing is that specific prophesies were made in the Old Testament and their specific fulfillments are recorded by authors (often by multiple authors) who lived centuries later. Claiming invalidity of this kind of testimony is just plain invalid unless it can be demonstrated that the writers colluded with one another or that the documents have been altered over time to make the books cohere. Could it be that the reason you reject the Bible is because you have decided a priori that it is invalid?

If I'm reading you correctly, you don't seem to have a problem with the prophesies that were made so much as the record of their fulfillment. Would that be an accurate assessment? If so, perhaps it would be more productive if you could pick out a specific prophesy and demonstrate why it is a lie or otherwise invalid?

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.

Okay, fair enough. But what do you do when you have no newspaper articles from the time that talk about his speeches? Do you discount what we know about Julius Caesar because his Commentaries on the Gallic War is the only source we have? From what I understand, though I'm certainly not an expert on Socrates, all we know about him is what was written by Plato. Do we then have to throw out Plato's writings as unreliable and "without proof"?

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.

Please correct me if I'm misreading this, but it sounds like you are saying that if the witnesses were testifying in your favor, you would accept their testimony but if they were testifying against you, you would claim that eyewitness testimony is unreliable. Assuming I'm reading you correctly, isn't this special pleading?

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.

I'm not clear on the difference between "courtroom proof" and "actual proof." Could you elaborate on this, please?

In your post Atheist: What would I accept as proof ? PART 1: Prophesy, you listed nine criteria for determining whether a prophesy were acceptable as proof:

a. The prophesy must predict something that is going to happen in the future.

All the prophesies I cited did just this…

b. It must predict something extremely specific.

…and this.

c. It must predict something that if true must be beyond probability.

You would not commit to a specific answer on this, but I would think that a 1 in 10^17 chance of fulfilling 8 prophesies and a 1 in 10^157 of one man fulfilling 48 prophesies would qualify as "beyond probability."

d. We must have no other way of knowing beyond that of god's insight. The event must be something that cannot be predicted by natural means.

You have not cited this as a reason for rejecting the prophesies concerning Christ that I listed, so I can only assume that prophesies concerning Christ also meet this criteria.

e. It must predict something that we have no control over. I could predict that a certain person was going to win the lottery on a specific day. If that prediction came true, I would find it far more likely that there was tampering with the lottery than there was an actual god inspired event.

Ditto here. While it could be argued that Jesus could have manipulated some events to fulfill prophesies (e.g. riding into town on a donkey) there are even more that could not be within his power to manipulate (e.g. soldiers dividing lots for his clothing, that his legs would not be broken on the cross, the seed of Abraham, descendant of David, etc., etc., etc.).

f. The prophecy MUST come true and must be verifiable that it did.

This is where I suspect you are hanging your hat, so to speak. However, you have not demonstrated under cross-examination why the testimony of the Gospel writers and their respective accounts of Jesus fulfillment of the OT prophesies should be rejected or even called into question other than the purely circumstantial evidence of the accounts bearing surface similarity to ancient myths and legends.

g. When it comes true, the extreme specifics of the prophecy must be carried out accurately. It must be beyond a statistical coincidence that it came true.

This is also demonstrated in Scripture (e.g. hands and feet pierced, bones not broken, born in Bethlehem, etc.) and the peer-reviewed statistical analysis done by Peter Stoner.

h. It must be fulfilled legitimately. There must be no tampering with evidence, or influence toward making the prediction occur in any way. This is probably easier said than done, but it is a crucial part of being able to consider a prediction to be true.

I have not seen you make any specific claims of evidence that has been tampered with or illicit influence, so the prophesies I cited also seem to pass this criterion.

i. One measure of a prophet's communion with god is repeatability of prophesy. I would consider it to be proof if a prophet made multiple accurate predictions that are statistically impossible to predict, and who's results are impossible to fake or manipulate.

We haven't gone into an in-depth analysis of any individual prophet's track record, but again you have not objected to messianic prophesies based upon this criterion, so I'm assuming they pass this one as well.

So based upon your own criteria and a lack of substantial, specific argumentation against the fulfilled prophesies I cited, I see no rational reason to reject their validity.

3. 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.

I think you have a false dichotomy here, Mike. You are presuming that those in the first century church recognized the canon based on a purely arbitrary basis. Why do you suppose none of the apocrypha enjoyed anything more than temporary or local recognition? Why did none of the apocryphal writings have anything more than a semi-canonical status? Why did no major canon or church council recognize them as canonical?

There were five basic criteria a work had to meet to be recognized as canonical:

1. Was the book written by a prophet of God?
2. Was the writer confirmed by acts of God?
3. Did the message tell the truth about God? God cannot contradict Himself (2 Cor. 1:17,18), nor can He utter what is false (Heb. 6:18). Hence, no book with false claims can be the Word of God. For reasons such as these, the church fathers maintained the policy "if in doubt, throw it out." This enhanced the validity of their discernment of the canonical books.
4. Does it come with the power of God?…The presence of God's transforming power was a strong indication that a given book had His stamp of approval.
5. Was it accepted by the people of God? [Canonicity is recognized, not declared.]

(McDowell, Evidence, pp. 21,22)
So yes, this is about evidence--textual evidence: authorship, internal consistency, consistency with other works that are recognized as canonical; and no, this is not a false analogy by any means.

4. 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.

Again, similarity means nothing especially in light of the differences between the works you cite and the account of Christ. But really this is just a red herring, Mike. That the ancient mystery religions and other pagan accounts bear some passing resemblance to the life and work of Christ is completely irrelevant. The question on the table is "Is the Bible trustworthy?" Let's stick to that question and not get distracted with the periphery.

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*.

I wonder…when you last played "telephone," were you allowed to verify the message you received with the person who originated the message?

c) ...Well.. for one, we don't know how true this story is.

About what story are you unsure? That the disciples were a bunch of cowards? Or that all but one were murdered for their testimony? Aristotle is credited as saying that "the benefit of the doubt is to be given to the document itself, not arrogated by the critic to himself." What about these accounts of the disciple's actions before and after Christ's resurrection do you find that discredits them?

And 2. I've heard from Cory that you're not LDS. Do you take that when Joseph Smith's [sic] 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.

Joseph Smith, Jr. was murdered by an angry mob while trying to defend himself from within the confines of a jail cell. I don't really think he had time to go about making statements before he passed. Secondly, Joseph Smith, Jr. was never (to the best of my knowledge) stoned, beaten or flogged for for his doctrine (2 Corinthians 11:16ff), and he never suffered physical torture, much less death, at the hands of someone seeking a retraction of his teachings.

So I ask you, is your comparison of Joseph Smith, Jr. to the biblical writers fair?

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.

Archaeological discoveries show that the Romans had a regular enrollment of taxpayers and also held censuses every fourteen years. This procedure was indeed begun under Augustus and the first took place in either 23-22 BC or in 9-8 BC. The latter would be the one to which Luke refers. (McDowell, Evidence, p. 63)

Secondly, we find evidence that Quirinius was governor of Syria around 7 BC. This assumption is based on an inscription found in Antioch ascribing to Quirinius this post. As a result of this finding, it is now supposed that he was governor twice--once in 7 BC and the other time in 6 AD (the date ascribed by Josephus) (Ibid)

Thirdly, having to go back to one's birthplace to register was not altogether unheard of during this time period, as evidenced by a papyrus found in the early 20th century bearing a decree made by Gaius Vibius Maximus, prefect of Egypt during the first century A.D., which said in part:

Since the enrollment by households is approaching, it is necessary to command all who for any reason are out of their own district to return to their own home, in order to perform the usual business of the taxation… (Cobern, C.M. 1929. The New Archeological Discoveries and their Bearing upon the New Testament. New York and London: Funk & Wagnalls, p. 47; Unger, M.F. 1962. Archaeology and the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, p. 64).

McDowell also quotes Dr. Norman Geisler as saying "Was Luke confused? No; in fact he mentions Quirinius later census in Acts 5:37. It is most likely that Luke is distinguishing this census in Herod's time from the more well-known census of Quirinius: "This census took place before Quirinius was governor of Syria." There are several New Testament parallels for this translation." (Ibid, p. 64)

Skeptical 19th century German archaeologist Sir William Ramsay, setting out to make a topographical study of Asia Minor (modern day Turkey), was compelled to consider the writings of Luke. As a result he had to admit a complete reversal in his beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence uncovered in his research. Speaking of this reversal, he said "I may fairly claim to have entered on this investigation without prejudice in favor of the conclusion which I shall now seek to justify to the reader. On the contrary, I began with a mind unfavorable to it, for the ingenuity and apparent completeness of the Tubingen theory had at once time quite convinced me. It did not then lie in my line of life to investigate the subject minutely; but more recently I found myself brought into contact with the Book of Acts as an authority for the topography, antiquities and society of Asia Minor. It was gradually borne upon me that in various details the narrative shoed marvelous truth. In fact, beginning with a fixed idea that the work was essentially a second century composition, and never relying on its evidence as trustworthy for first century conditions, I gradually came to find it a useful ally in some obscure and difficult investigations." (McDowell, New Evidence That Demands a Verdict, sidebar on p. 62).

Ramsay is also quoted as saying "Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy…this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians…Luke's history is unsurpassed in respect of its trustworthiness." (McDowell, Evidence, p. 61)

At the risk of exploding this post into a full-blown novel, I'll cut this point short by simply pointing out that in light of the tremendous amount of painstaking detail that Luke documented both in his gospel and in the book of Acts, and that Luke is widely regarded, even by some secular scholars, as a first-rate historian, I really don't see any solid evidence to discount his testimony.


7. 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.

A discrepancy is not the same as an error, Mike. A discrepancy is simply a difference. Just because there is a difference reported by two people concerning the same event doesn't mean that they are not both telling the truth--it just means you have to do more than scratch the surface to discover the truth. To use a modern day example, consider the following statements:

1. "Shaq's father is Joseph Toney."
2. "Shaq's father is Phillip Harrison."

There is definitely a discrepancy here, but is there an error (i.e. a contradiction)? For these two statements to violate the law of noncontradiction, they have to both be true at the same time and in the same sense. But they're not because statement 1 talks about his biological father whereas #2 talks about his legal father (since his biological father relinquished parental rights)--the man that Shaq calls "my father."

Wow..another novel…time to send this one to the publisher. :-)

-dan