Scaling the Infinitely High Wall

1. You are arguing, "My belief is true, because what I believe in tells me it's true." It's a circular argument.

That does look fairly circular, doesn't it? Fortunately, though, that's not my argument. My argument is that

My belief is true because it is based upon the Bible which is a "reliable collection of historical documents written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses. They record events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophesies, and they claim their writings are divine rather than human in origin." (see Why I Choose To Believe the Bible) This is demonstrable via manuscript evidence, archaeology, prophesies and the statistical probability against these prophesies being fulfilled by chance.

If I tell you I am God, you can't logically argue that I am because I say I am regardless of how many people believed me.

You seem to be hinting that I've pulled an appeal to the majority, but to the best of my recollection, I have never made the argument that "X billiion Christians can't be wrong." If I'm reading too much into this statement, please forgive me, but it just seems like you're teetering on the edge of a straw man argument there.

I can argue that you're not God because you fail to meet your own standards of God's attributes that you outlined in your very first post (i.e. omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, etc.). Now, if you were to start pullin' off some miracles like raising folks from the dead, then I'd have to take another look. :-)

It sounds ridiculous to me, and that is why I discount it's testimony.

"If, at first, an idea does not sound absurd, then there's no hope for it." -- Albert Einstein

It is NOT historically reliable (as I eluded to in my last post about getting the dates wrong about the census).

The message I'm getting here, Mike, is that if something sounds absurd to you then no amount of evidence or rational explanation is going to sway you. This is just being arbitrary. I've offered you reasonable explanations for the dating and mode of the census in question, yet I have not seen you acknowledge them. I don't know if you saw it, but I posted a follow up comment on an earlier post that offers a reasonable explanation for the "Joseph has two fathers" objection as well.

And I can write a whole post with examples on how it isn't internally consistent. If Jesus is the son of God, there needs to be proof other than the hearsay of people who couldn't explain the world without the use of superstition. Of course parts of the Bible are true. We have archaeological evidence to back up that there were cities, people, and even some events talked about in the books. But we have no evidence of the supernatural tales which were written. The inaccuracies alone in the Bible show that we need outside evidence to prove any sort of validity in the tales.

Now this is very interesting indeed. You say in this post that "The miracle must have actually happened, and be verifiable that it happened." You ask for evidence for an historical event, yet you reject out of hand any testimony from the people that saw them happen in the presence of other eyewitnesses based upon a presupposition that the witnesses were superstitious ignoramuses simply by virtue of epoch in which they lived--guilt by association. Does this not seem rather arrogant to you?

Special pleading is a tactic I could use in a court of law, but not in the field of science and logic. That's exactly my point when I say there's a difference between, "Courtroom proof" and "actual proof". I elaborated more on this in my recent response to Cory here.

So you really don't believe that eyewitness testimony is completely unreliable. Belief is not belief unless you're willing to live it out when even when it is inconvenient for you; otherwise what you have is pragmatism--whatever works at the time'll do. You are applying one standard for yourself and another for those who walked the roads and fields of Israel during the 1st century A.D.--eyewitness testimony is okay if it agrees with your position, but unreliable when it grates against your belief system.

6. "I wonder…when you last played "telephone," were you allowed to verify the message you received with the person who originated the message?" Even if I did, sometimes it still turns out wrong, especially if it's a game of telephone that has gone on for decades.

This is the mother of all false analogies. In the game of Telephone, the message has its origins in the mind of one person who tells one other person, all the way around the circle. However, this is absolutely not what happened with the accounts we read in the Bible--remember when I said that the Bible was written by eyewitnesses who lived during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses? Most events took place in full view of the public--only a handful were done in private. Thus, there's not even a passing resemblance to the game, and any attempt to draw such an analogy is patently absurd, if not just plain intellectually dishonest.

I can try and come up with a list of inaccuracies of the New Testament if you want, but that's for another time. I already gave a few examples, which I think is more than enough to make my point.

I look forward to addressing a list of alleged inaccuracies.

8. Joseph Smith was MURDERED for his claims... why does him having to be physically tortured make a statement any more valid? From my understanding, I'm not an LDS Historian, but Joseph Smith had a chance to get away, but when confronted about it, decided to go face the ensuing mob. That sounds like martyrdom to me. All he had to do was leave, or change his claims, and he did neither.

The context of this question was my statement that the disciples would not go from cowards to dying for their message if they knew it to be a lie. This says nothing about someone who sincerely believes what he believes he is telling the truth. Your assertion is that the biblical authors "fabricated/adjusted/stretched from the truth in order to fit the tales of him to the predetermined indicators of the messiah"--i.e. that they lied. If they lied, then they knew they were liars. If they knew they were liars, then they would not have gone from cowards to turning the Roman Empire upside down. Can you imagine the apostles getting together over some matzohs and wine and writing up these stories just so a "dead guy" would look like the messiah the nation had waited for for centuries and then being faced with stonings, beatings and crucifixion and not a one of them would recant? I don't know about you, but my imagination isn't that good.

BTW, Smith went to face the mob because he thought they were out to rescue him (wikipedia). But then again, this is all just heresy based upon unreliable eyewitness testimony, so it's probably all bunk anyway.

9. It sounds to me like having to come up with a band-aid answer to reason why it's not wrong.

I think Cory mentioned this in one of his earlier posts--you have set up an impossible criteria for believability, Mike. You cry "bullocks" because something sounds ridiculous without really trying to understand it. You ask for proof of historical events, but then reject a priori eyewitness testimony as recorded in the Bible…because it's in the Bible. Then you turn around and ask for corroborating accounts from outside of Scripture for every miracle recorded--but this would require more eyewitness testimony from superstitious folks who simply cannot tell fact from fiction. When a plausible explanation is given for reconciling the discrepancy, you call it a "Band-Aid answer" and dismiss it a priori as so much "poo-poo."

Physical, tangible, put-it-in-a-test-tube evidence is not how historical accounts of events are verified, Mike. If this is the kind of evidence you require for a transient event in history that left no physical trace of its passing--then to be consistent you're going to have to throw out a good portion of all of recorded history. Using this criteria for historical proof, I can't even "prove" to you that I had a smoothie for breakfast every day last week, so how is anyone supposed to be able to scale this infinitely high wall you've erected between yourself and the truth claims of the Bible?

Please forgive my terseness…I'm not irritated or angry (though I am a bit perplexed)--I'm just trying to keep the length of my replies under control so as not to scare away those in our audience with short attention spans. :-) I continue to appreciate your willingness to allow me to discuss these issues with you.

Until next time,

-dan