Ignorance and the Bible

You still never came up with justification for why the people who willingly died with Koresh in Waco weren't dying for a false idea.
Gave up using Jonestown as your argument?

You're making my point for me.

People won't choose to die for something they know is a lie.
They have to actually believe it's true, and be utterly committed to that belief to choose death.

The militant atheists who have spent message board careers claiming that the apostles and evangelists conspired to fabricate a crucifixion and resurrection story out of whole cloth need to explain why those people were willing to endure beatings, prison, and execution for that belief.
 
Gave up using Jonestown as your argument?

Actually no. Because even if ONE person committed suicide there it makes my point. And you can't convince anyone that it was 100% forced drinking of the Kool Aid.


People won't choose to die for something they know is a lie.

And this is your fourth type of fallacy: moving the goal posts. My point is that they DO believe it, but it is not true.

I am struggling to understand how difficult this concept seems to be for you.


 
There is decent circumstantial evidence that Mark was Peter's companion and his gospel was based on Peter's teachings and testimony.

Luke was a companion of Paul. Luke openly states in the introduction to his Gospel that he talked to and investigated the eyewitnesses.

There is absolutely no propaganda value for the church to name two canonical gospels after obscure low-ranking Christians like Mark and Luke. That's a line of evidence for the authenticity of the authorship.

The is circumstantial evidence that Matthew's gospel is based on a Hebrew manuscript Matthew wrote and was later compiled and edited into a Greek edition.

John is the only one where I think authorship is truly questionable.

Early church bishops in the late first century and early second century were quoting from these gospels, so we know the gospels are first century transcriptions written when the eyewitnesses or people who knew the eyewitnesses were still alive.


You can say everyone is lying, but then you are getting into conspiracy theory land, and you would also have to explain why Peter, James, and Paul were willing to be executed for something they knew was a lie.
Nope. Nobody knows who wrote John or the Synoptic Gospels.
 
And this is your fourth type of fallacy: moving the goal posts. My point is that they DO believe it, but it is not true.
If they genuinely believe it's true, that proves they didn't sit around a table with carafes of wine fabricating and inventing a crucifixion/resurrection story - that has been a long-standing claim amongst militant atheists. It's clear from the historical record some of the apostles chose death for their belief. They wouldn't have chosen death if they knew they had conspired together to make the story up out of whole cloth.
 
If they genuinely believe it's true, that proves they didn't sit around a table with carafes of wine fabricating and inventing a crucifixion/resurrection story - that has been a long-standing claim amongst militant atheists. It's clear from the historical record some of the apostles chose death for their belief. They wouldn't have chosen death if they knew they had conspired together to make the story up out of whole cloth.

Literally the ONLY person on here who is proposing "conspiracy" is you.

Can't you understand the larger point?

If not I'll be glad to explain it to you but I am struggling to understand how you cannot seem to get this point.
 
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Literally the ONLY person on here who is proposing "conspiracy" is you.

Can't you understand the larger point?????

If not I'll be glad to explain it to you but I am struggling to understand how you cannot seem to get this point.
It's you who doesn't get the point.

The pertinent question is not whether the apostles were wrong.

The question is did they actually genuinely believe in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, or did they conspire to fabricate the story?

The fact they chose prison and death for that belief is powerful evidence they did not concoct the story.

Message board atheists for years have claimed the resurrection accounts were later fabrications. That claim does not withstand scrutiny.


I make no value judgments on the truth claims of the apostles. Either a miracle actually happened; or they all hallucinated; or Jesus did not die on the cross and appeared to his followers later.

It's up to the individual person to decide which option makes sense.
 
LOL. Says the guy who can't understand implicit atheism! LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL


(And the best part is, the same reasoning behind implicit atheism is something he uses every single day!)
I say that I do not know if any gods exist or not.

I also say that any person who uses "atheist" as a self-descriptor does so MOSTLY because he/she believes there are no gods...or believes that it is more likely that there are no gods than that there is at least one.

You are such a person...which is the reason you will not answer those questions.

But...it is obvious to me that you are an intellectual coward...so I do not expect other. I just keep asking for the entertainment value.
 
It's you who doesn't get the point.

The pertinent question is not whether the apostles were wrong.

The question is did they actually genuinely believe in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, or did they conspire to fabricate the story?

The fact they chose prison and death for that belief is powerful evidence they did not concoct the story.

Message board atheists for years have claimed the resurrection accounts were later fabrications. That claim does not withstand scrutiny.


I make no value judgments on the truth claims of the apostles. Either a miracle actually happened; or they all hallucinated; or Jesus did not die on the cross and appeared to his followers later.

It's up to the individual person to decide which option makes sense.

Sorry but if you think people can't believe a false belief and even die for it then you are unfamiliar with most of history.
 
Sorry but if you think people can't believe a false belief and even die for it then you are unfamiliar with most of history.
Think man, think!

That's not the issue I have ever broached.

I only ever pushed back on the atheist claim that the resurrection is a later fabrication concocted out of whole cloth.

Even the great atheist scholar Bart Eerman believes there is sufficient evidence to conclude the apostles genuinely believed they saw Jesus after the crucifixion.

Whether the apostles were mistaken in that belief is another question. One theory is that the apostles were all hallucinating, or they were all mentally ill.

Those claims don't stand up to scrutiny as far as I'm concerned, and I have my own theory.
 
Nope. Nobody knows who wrote John or the Synoptic Gospels.
What's your rationale, in your own words?

I gave you mine: multiple lines of evidence support the authorship of Mark, Luke, Mathew.

At some point, if all you can claim is that everybody is lying, then you start crossing into conspiracy theory land.
 
Think man, think!

That's not the issue I have ever broached.

I only ever pushed back on the atheist claim that the resurrection is a later fabrication concocted out of whole cloth.

Because it doesn't have to be real. Just because it is in a book somewhere does not make it ipso facto reality.

Yeah, so what if Jesus was just "knocked out" and "came to" in the tomb and wandered off. That isn't what the same witnesses you rely on say happened.

So you seem to be cherry picking which parts to hold as "gospel" and just ignoring the ones that are too weird. Like flying up into heaven. Or earthquakes that literally no one recorded.

Even the great atheist scholar Bart Eerman

How many times will you do this "appeal to authority"? I don't care.

Whether the apostles were mistaken in that belief is another question.

No. It is the exact question.

One theory is that the apostles were all hallucinating, or they were all mentally ill.

Does it always have to be "hallucination" or "mental illness"?

You know stories arise that aren't true all the time. Often times through simple misunderstanding and confusion. Add on to that that the stories we are talking about weren't written down for decades after the events. We don't even know who actually wrote the things regardless of whatever authority you prefer thinks.

Why do you refuse to allow that these things could have arisen quite naturally as narratives but be wrong or simply false without everyone being a conniving evildoer?

 
Because it doesn't have to be real!
So your back to claiming the resurrection accounts in the the Mark, Luke, Matthew, John, and in 1 Corinthians are later fabrications.

Sorry, that claim doesn't stand up to scrutiny, though obviously militant atheists have spent their adult lives wishing it were true.
 
So your back to claiming the resurrection accounts in the the Mark, Luke, Matthew, John, and in 1 Corinthians are later fabrications.

Sure, why not?

If you believe it, then why don't you believe ALL of the story? The ascent into heaven? The earthquake during the Crucifixion


You just like to cherry pick.

Sorry, that claim doesn't stand up to scrutiny, though obviously militant atheists have spent their adult lives wishing it were true.

Are you seriously telling me that it beggars belief to you that a man 2000 years ago didn't walk out of his tomb after being killed by the Romans?

Ummm, yeah, yeah I think it could be wholly made up.

Just like the earthquake and Jesus flying up into heaven later on. I don't believe it happened.

COULD some rando have survived Roman crucifixion and later scampered off into the night? Sure! Is that the origin of this great faith? Well the same people that told me he walked out of his tomb also told me he flew up into heaven. So there's always that...
 
"Amateur". That's hilarious. Especially coming from someone who doesn't even know he uses the same rationale/rubric as implicit atheists every single day
Nice try. All I do is laugh at your attempts though.

I've been crushing so-called implicit atheists since before you were even born.

You are a gas, though.

;)
 
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