got any links that talk about this? I have yet to read anything that makes such a claim (and in fact most things i've read have claimed that the bible is fairly inaccurate in terms of geography), but since you state this so confidently I'm guessing you know something i dont. Please share. thanks!

Aaron:

The culture that is presented in Mean Girls is consistent with extra-Mean Girls presentations of the culture. Indeed, since we are living in the present, we can even say it is consistent with the actual culture. High schools really are like that.

Nonetheless, the events depicted in Mean Girls are fiction.

As for "invisible man in the sky"-- you mistake derision for ignorance.

In my frustration with the increasingly inane accusations, I overstepped. The geography/culture of Acts is very well laid out, but the gospels do come up short. Nonetheless, is a link:

Chapter 3 of "The Book of Acts in Its Palestinian Setting" by Richard Bauckham (chapter title: The Geography of Palestine in Acts) is a decent reading. I think you should be able to access the first few pages of that section on google books, which is worth reading. It talks specifically about the difficulty of geography in ancient times, which addresses some of the issues related to the geography of the gospels.

http://books.google.com/books?id=iLL...page&q&f=false

(I don't know if the link will work, but you can search for it in google books if it doesn't.)

It qualifies for both.

LOL @ this line of reasoning. This has been hashed out so many times. It's demonstrably a strawman position. Usually the pretext of this comment is related to historical fiction. People write historical fiction about events with no actual history. This is all true.

But the gospels were not written as that (historical fiction is not a genre that existed back then, plus the style of writing used indicates that the author intended the writing to be interpreted as actual events), and to quote Hoffman AGAIN:

It does not make sense to interpret the gospels as mythical literature, or fictional literature. Therefore, the analogy fails because you're discussing different writing genres. You cannot reject the gospels as containing "knowledge" on this basis.

Edit: By the way, LOL @ moving the goalposts again. The jump from "contains no knowledge" to "fiction" is laughable.

The thing is, neither you or Mr. Hoffman actually know the purpose that the gospels were written for. You aren't mind-readers, and since we don't even know who wrote them, we certainly don't know what their purpose was.

You are relying on Mr. Hoffman as a substitute for actually providing reasoning to support your assumptions about these texts. But more importantly, again, you are also OVERCLAIMING. You will note that Mr. Hoffman DOES NOT ACTUALLY SAY that it is possible to establish the purpose of the authors of the gospels. All he says in your one-line quote is that he rejects the claim that the authors were "deceptive", whatever that means.

So you have a historian, who you quote a single line here and there from, who says that he rejects various claims. You don't quote his reasoning, don't explain why he is right, and overstate and overclaim as compared to what he actually says.

What you don't do, and can't do, is read the minds of the authors of the gospels. Nor do you have their drafts or notes. Nor do you know anything about what motivated them to write what they wrote. Nor do you even know who they were.

You are just a serial overclaimer, Aaron. You want to believe that you know all sorts of little details about what went on 2,000 years ago. Real historians offer hypotheses-- they don't overclaim.

LOL LOL. Are you really going to take this route? If we tried to apply your "consistent standard" there would be no way to determine that Shakespeare wasn't writing historical re-enactments. This is absurd.

Nope. He's supporting my assumption about you and your ignorance. In context, he concedes that basically the only people who accept a Jesus myth are those who have the *preconceived belief* that it is a myth. One reason why I'm using his words so often is because kurto presented him as an expert witness in FAVOR of the Jesus myth. But you're following right along those same lines.

I linked to the entire letter that he wrote. He didn't provide an explicit account of his reasoning, but why would you expect that from that particular forum?

But the main bulk of his argument would likely come down to a timeline issue. Myths do not spread over the course of a one or two generations. Also, the writing style of the gospel is not supportive of myth (because of the details included -- myths generally contain mostly vague references). The writing style is consistent with someone writing of facts (the genre of historical fiction wasn't particularly popular back then, if it even existed at all).

And you are serially ignorant.

Tell me what I have overclaimed (excepting the gospel/book of Acts thing, which I have already admitted to).

And while you're digging back through what I wrote, how about finally answering some questions instead of launching endless accusations?

Edit: How about just this one:

Aaron do you think believers who claim Jesus rose form the dead should be held to the same standers as someone who claims he might of been myth?

Aaron, I actually answered the questions you asked upthread. But I love what I quoted above. I just love it. The "genre of historical fiction" may be the oldest literary genre going. What, exactly, do you call the Chinese accounts of their earliest dynasties? What do you call the oral traditions of indigenous societies? How about the various tales of the tribes of Israel in the Hebrew Bible?

Or, to choose something written just around the same general time period as the canonical New Testament, what do you call something like Virgil's Aeneid?

The great civilizations of biblical times were AWASH in historical fiction, Aaron.

To some extent, you're making my point for me. The Aeneid was poetry. It's clearly poetry. It cannot be mistaken as accidental history. The gospels are not written in that style.

Compare this to the style of historical fiction that we see today (the sense in which I used the term), where the authors attempt to blur the lines between history and fiction, to try to draw people into the story more deeply. The writing style is written to convey a deeper sense of realism, rather than a greater sense of fantasy.

If you want to call the Aeneid "historical fiction", fine. Whatever.

You're comparing two completely different types of claims, requiring different types of argumentation.

The Jesus myth people are claiming that no such person actually existed. The believers who claim Jesus rose from the dead are claiming the factuality of a specific event.

Neither side of the table has it easy. The bar for the historicity of persons is very low, as I've noted several times already. And to prove that a specific event (of no immediately apparent historical importance) from 2000 years ago happened is also very difficult.

But it's not sensible to hold them to the "same standard" simply because they are such different types of claims.

Meh i think Jesus rising form the dead is more of a far fetched claim and believers never seem to have a problem with that one. But alright.

You responded to one tree and missed the forest, Aaron. You said historical fiction didn't exist. It clearly did, and not only in epic poetry, aaron. I gave a number of examples of it.

Thus, saying "well the NT can't be historical fiction; it's not a poem" misses the point. Actually, it reads just like historical fiction: historical events serving as the backdrop for a bunch of crap that didn't happen. It reads like a bad Irving Stone novel. (Indeed that's one reason we can be quite sure God didn't write it.)

You said

How much credit should a disputed text be given? What about if the dispute has been resolved? As I pointed out before, the authenticity has been resolved, and it resolves in favor of historical Jesus. Do you even know the nature of the dispute? If you did, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation.

You're so severely under-informed at the moment. You're clinging onto this notion of "disputed text" as if it's somehow rocking the boat.

None of the arguments you have presented even pass a basic sniff test. There's been something wrong with your argument at every step of the way.

And you have yet to tell me where I've overclaimed something. This is your CAPS LOCK ACCUSATION, but you haven't produced any evidence for it.

Apparently, you didn't read very carefully.

You're not using the same lexicon as I am. And I wonder whether anyone would agree with you that the Aeneid is historical fiction (that is, I'm not sure how many people agree that your definition is reasonable).

By the way, your second paragraph makes my point for me again. "It reads just like [a 20th century] historical fiction" (a style which didn't exist back then). If you had said that it reads like historical fiction X from plus or minus 200 years from Jesus' time, you might have something that resembles an argument in your favor. But your inability to think of such an example (again, I'm firmly convinced that no such example exists), simply increases my credibility and diminishes yours.

This is actually false. Believers do have problems with it. Enough to create unbelievers out of them, enough to prevent people from believing, and enough that some believers try to take the story to be allegorical.

However, in my own understanding of my faith as it has developed is that there is a very deep philosophical shift that occurs which allows this to be acceptable. Fundamentally, if God is who he is portrayed to be, then this is possible.

The question of what is possible and impossible falls in the realm of our preconceived notions about how the universe works. If you place God below the laws of the universe, then God isn't the God of the universe, but God subject to the universe. If you put God above the universe, then the universe is subject to God, and God's authority is sufficient to impact the universe as he sees fit.

Will this line of reasoning convince a non-believer to suddenly believe? Nope. But that's not the intention. It's simply a framework of understanding.

Well said. The bolded is especially important. I have never understood why atheists have had a problem with Jesus rising from the dead.

This is stupid and circular. Really, much more stupid than believing Jesus didn't exist. And certainly much more stupid than believing that Aaron doesn't know diddly about who wrote the canonical gospels (which, of course, isn't actually stupid at all-- it's true).

If you place magic outside the laws of the universe, than magic is possible. If you place witchcraft outside the laws of the universe, than witchcraft is possible. And if you place Joseph Smith's God or Xenu outside the laws of the universe, they are possible as well.

It's really convenient to take something that is idiotic and has no intellectual basis and say "well, if you just assume the laws of the universe don't operate with respect to that subject matter, it could happen". Yeah, and if you just assume that Gisele Bundchen was attracted to me, she might screw me too.

Further, the laws of the universe, unlike Aaron's naive and intellectually blind faith in who wrote the gospels, are actually observed, tested, and hypothesized to greater and greater specificity based on evidence. They are NOT based on preconceived notions. In fact, it's really funny to see someone who believes in dumb and unsupported things based on preconceived notions say that something that we actually observe through rigorous scientific testing and which we have developed a better and better understanding of over time is nothing more than a preconceived notion.

Aaron thinks things that are actually preconceived notions (God, the supernatural, resurrections) can be established through evidence and things that can be established through evidence (like the laws of the universe) are actually preconceived notions. That's either insanity or stupidity.

My question for you is, what made you believe this supernatural event did happen and what makes you think other religious supernatural events are false?

How many christians on this board have said if jesus didn't rise from the dead they'd have to seriously reconsider their beliefs? A lot iirc. So.....jesus rising from the dead isn't impossible because he makes the rules, so to speak. How do we know he makes the rules? Well, apparently a big reason we know that is because he rose from the dead which is a testament to his supernatural abilities. None of you have a problem with this line of thinking? Fairly drunk so hope that makes sense.

I'm amused that you talk as if you're not talking to me anymore.

Actually, your position is just as "stupid and circular" as mine. You are clearly conflating "possible" with "laws of the universe" and "Laws of the Universe." Don't feel embarrassed. This is the identical misstep that Dawkins has made.

The mathematical laws that we have derived are governed by the universe, not the other way around. The mathematical laws that we have derived are subject to being changed and updated as we increase our knowledge, but the universe will do whatever it wants to do.

I suggest you also take the time to do some reading in philosophy. This seems to be another area of intellectual weakness in your position.

The methods you use to understand empirical evidence ARE preconceived notions. Or are you going to prove the trustworthiness of the scientific method using the scientific method? Good luck.

LOL strawman.

Are you going to quote me on an OVERCLAIM? Or are you just going to convict yourself of being an OVERCLAIMER by continuing to do it?

This is kind of my point. You dont hold yourself to the same standers to believe in and claim something is true that you demand of atheists. You believe and claim God interacts with the earth and have noting you can really show anymore then the atheist who says Jesus might of been myth.

Aaron, when you say that the method of observation is a preconceived notion, what you are really saying is you reject empiricism. There is an intellectual foundation for this-- George Berkeley, for instance.

But the problem is, we keep on learning new and amazing things through observation and testing. It works. And you are actually lying through your teeth in your position, because if you contract a serious disease, you are going to take peer reviewed scientific treatments rather than going to a Christian faith healer.

Meanwhile, religion has discovered abolutely nothing new and instead we've managed to prove hundreds of religious claims false over the last centuries.

You aren't honest. You just take a position against something that actually does a very good job of explaining the universe (science) because you can't bear to see your religious beliefs threatened. But you don't really reject science, because that would require you to give up its benefits.

You can imprison Galileo, but eppi si muove.

1) Where have I demanded that atheists reach some "standard" with respect to some proof of the same type?

2) How can the claim even be proven?

This is a purely philosophical discussion, that is unrelated to any particular piece of evidence that can be presented. Unfortunately, just as with theology, everybody can "do" philosophy, but this doesn't mean that everybody does it well.

There was an entire thread in SMP about free will where it had to be repeated over and over again that the question is underdetermined. That is, there is no "evidence" that could ever be presented to tip the scale one way or the other. For this reason, many people simply reject the conversation. That's fine.

But within the confines of the conversation, it is important to recognize what claims are *ACTUALLY* being addressed and made. In particular, show me where I have held someone to a standard of evidence in this thread OTHER THAN the standard that someone has presented for himself.

With respect to lawdude, I have shown that he does not actually apply his standards "consistently" (or at least, has yet to produce evidence that he actually has done any research on the things he claims to believe to be true -- post #68).

With respect to kurto, he made a particular claim regarding the lack of scholarly research done on the question of the existence of Jesus, and thereby wanted to conclude that therefore it is unreasonable to hold that Jesus exists. But this standard can be applied to other historical figures (I chose Abraham Lincoln) and lead to the conclusion that therefore it is reasonable to conclude that he didn't exist. Once again, it's not some standard that *I* have erected, but a standard that he set for himself.

I'm *STILL* waiting for lawdude to actually point out my "OVERCLAIMING." Despite the fact that I've requested him to do so multiple times, he has failed to do it. (Including in the post that follows yours.)

Welcome to philosophy. I'm glad you've finally caught up.

I never said that there wasn't. But if you think that pointing to George Berkeley means anything of importance to this point, you're wrong.

LOL red herring.

Has the basic nature of the human experience and basic human existence changed over the last few centuries? We're all born, we struggle through our lives in search of some sort of purpose or meaning, then we die. Making sense of this from a scientific perspective is easy. Making sense of this from the experiential perspective is much more difficult.

And you aren't smart enough to understand the conversation. And you lack the intellectual capacity to engage me on the topic, so instead you throw out red herrings and strawmen and insults trying to make it sound like you've made a point.

I urge you to continue in your pursuit of philosophy. It seems that you still have much to learn.

Where did I reject science? You know that there's a difference between science being *A* means to knowledge, and science being *THE* means to knowledge, right?