I've listened to Craig several times on this. Pretty unconvincing IMO. But too pooped now, maybe pick this up tomorrow.

First, I am not familiar enough with Brahman to comment on the likely hood that their could even be historical evidence. But aside from that we have to deal with what we do know, not what we do not know. If you made the claim in your post I could simply come back with the claim that "well there is actually a ton more evidence for Jesus that was also lost as well", and see where the issue would be.

Plus, it is not just that Jesus has more historical evidence, but that if one finds the historical evidence sufficient for Jesus and his resurrection then one must affirm that what he said was true.

I am currently reading a book by Boyd on the historical evidence for Jesus, only about 40 pages into a 400 page book, I will let you know how it goes.

I would disagree, (obviously) and feel that the biblical description of God and why the world is the way that it is is the greatest and most plausible explanation that I have ever seen. I am also going to crash so we will continue tomorrow.

Yes...let's expound on this.... your view is that the Hindu god is more likely to exist than the Christian God because he came first.

Let's expound on that.

I'l let you go first:

I need Cliff Notes emailed to me please.... I'm doing Disney and this child has no0 fears.... none.

You are not representing my side of the argument correctly and are trying to make it sound invalid by doing so.

I said God prophesied these events to happen in the Bible which are HIS words. That is why the Bible is also known as the Word of God. You are trying to make it seem like I said a document said something was real, then said something else was real which was real, therefore making the other thing real as well. That is incorrect and was obviously not the point I was trying to get across.

Again, I was saying the prophecies in the Bible are God's own words, which is obviously shown by the fact that all of these prophecies became/are currently becoming/are going to be fulfilled.

Your other part of attempting to deconstruct my point is also invalid. You make the example of saying a general broad scope of 200 things and when 5 of them luckily become true then you are a prophet. This is completely irrelevant to the prophecy that was fulfilled in Ezekiel and to every single prophecy that was fulfilled in the Bible. There were a handful of prophecies given and each one was specifically fulfilled to the very last detail.

And if you think prophesying that a nation that has minimal (if any) conflict with other nations at the time will be destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar, then destroyed by several other nations, and will be completely destroyed, the debris thrown into the water, fish nets will be hung over them, and the city will never be found/resurrected again EVER, than you are severely mistaken.

As to this part, I assumed you meant how I said what you said because if you meant what I am quoting here (above) this is very bad. You are starting with "the words of the bible = christian god's words" and using this to argue that Christianity is likely to be true. Your premise presupposes your conclusion (god could not have wrote words if he did not exist), this is circular reasoning, and it does not work. That's why I figured you were not doing what you apparently were doing.

Well we will have to disagree here. But again, I will go ahead and grant you that these "predictions" were not general and shotgun-like (make a lot and a few will hit) but rather grant that they were precise and accurate. But even when I do this I can now (i.e., right now) write a detailed description of what "will" happen in the year 2009 and when someone many years later reads what I wrote they will say "wow, these are all correct, and the last page says FMS is real."

Sorry, but it is not circular reasoning.

The Bible says that each word in the Bible is the Word of God. This is proven through the many many prophecies that were fulfilled and are being fulfilled, as well as many other facts, but if you want me to get into the full details of the validity of the Bible than that is a whole other topic.

Your argument of me using circular reasoning is hinging upon the premise that the hundreds of prophecies fulfilled in the Bible are invalid.

Assuming you are an atheist, or at least person who promotes "rational thinking and reasoning" then you of all people should notice that the evidence is jumping right out of the pages of the Bible that God exists! You cannot deny the hundreds of prophecies that were fulfilled in the Bible and are continuing to be fulfilled!

It seems you have kind of switched your argument around now since I deconstructed the first part of it.

Please correct me if I am wrong but this is what you are saying. If you were to predict that Person A would die in 2009 before it happened, and then it did and then put FSM is real then you would be a prophet and FSM would be real.

This is a poor attempt to argue against my point, as I have already proved that school of reason is not valid. The "I said this is true, and its true so everything I said must be true." is the school of reason i am referring to.

The most significant evidence of the historical existence of Jesus outside of the Bible is contained in the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus, written in the late first century AD. However, there are well known flaws in it. The well known Testimonium Flavianum is viewed by many as a later insertion to the existing text.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus

And there is also the apparently fraudulent exchange of letters between Jesus and Abgar.

The legend tells that Abgar, king of Edessa, afflicted with an incurable sickness, had heard the fame of the power and miracles of Jesus and wrote to him, acknowledging his divinity, craving his help, and offering him asylum in his own residence; the tradition states that Jesus wrote a letter declining to go, but promising that after his ascension, he would send one of his disciples, endowed with his power.

The 4th century church historian Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea, records a tradition concerning a correspondence on this occasion, exchanged between Abgar of Edessa and Jesus. Eusebius was convinced that the original letters, written in Syriac, were kept in the archives of Edessa.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abgar_V_of_Edessa

From the Catholic website:
"The text is borrowed in two places from that of the Gospel, which of itself is sufficient to disprove the authenticity of the letter."
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01042c.htm

you should do yourself a favor and try not to believe only the bias evidence that supports your beliefs. You obviously are only looking for people who agree that there are hundreds of prophecies "fulfilled" in the Bible.

A more "rational" and "reasonable" person would look at the evidence from both parties, and unfortunately, the experts agree on one thing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_prophecy


The most hilarious of it all is how Christians try to make Jesus out as some person who fulfilled the messianic prophesies, when in fact, if you ask any Jewish scholar, its clear Jesus didn't fulfill *any* messianic prophesies whatsoever. For example, Christians love to pull out the verses in Isaiah saying the Messiah would be born of a virgin, and they say AND LOOK he *was* born of a virgin, when in fact, those verses in isaiah aren't prophesy related to the messiah at all. Sounds to me like some Jews who didn't actually understand the OT (*cough* the original writers of the NT) made a pretty big mistake.

Ah, you are the classic skeptic that believes that the Bible has been tampered with to make the prophecies falsely fulfilled...

There have been thousands and thousands of manuscripts of the Bible discovered to date (by the way more than any other historical document by over 5,000 manuscripts). So the validity of the Bible being called into question is ludicrous.

Also, not sure what your argument against the passages in Isaiah not being about the Messiah is constructed on.

Judaism i believe.

Thats what I was saying about 2009. Its now 2010. If I write predictions for 2009 they will all be accurate. DUCY?

New acc, strait into obvious troll-jesus talk, stop trolling and next time dont make it so obvious.

Suggestion:
Google bible forgeries

try to remain calm

wrong, did you even read what i posted? How am i not surprised you didnt ... its obv your mind is already made up

completely unrelated. again its obvious you didnt understand a single word i posted.

its called reading the bible how its suppose to be read

they are obviously very close, and hard to split....

i feel like fsm should have a slight advantage in terms of accuracy only because i feel god would reveal himself better over time and thus there is a recency effect. it would be strange for the true religion to have happened at an arbitrary time in the past mostly concluding 2000 years ago, or earlier in the case of roman or norse gods for example.

there is also the vast amount of flaws and contradictions in christianity, however that can hardly be counted as any religion will gain those over time and again, christianity has been around longer.

Well he did reveal himself over more than 1500 years in the pages of the bible and ultimately in his Son, Jesus Christ.

So why doesn't he reveal himself more? Because you're suppose to seek him.

You probably should check a concordance for passages in the bible containing the word "seek" then read those passages.

post 47:

i understand and am not arguing with any of this, im just trying to find a way to approach the question objectively. recency and relevance are really the only objective factors i can think of from which we can objectively compare potential accuracy.

Noooo.... you missed my point.... almost clearly stated it though.
I don't expect atheist to say the Christian God is more likely.... not at all.
What I would expect is something along the lines of how you put it.

If I were an atheist... my stance would be very similar to yours but a bit more harsh. My view would be stated like this:
There is no god...there never was a god... any talk of which came first is simply fodder. One thing that does not exist can not have "not existed" earlier than another thing that does not exist.

I wouldn't personify a god by giving him characteristics to make him appear evil and hateful. He, She, It doesn't exist. End of story.

That's because either:

1) you don't understand the atheist position,
2) as a theist you can't imagine having beliefs that are not dogmatic, or
3) you're once again just trying to get a rise out of atheists, prodding us to explain to you once again why you're misrepresenting the atheist position

Tyre