"New Age" Atheism

Originally posted by @romans1009
One has nothing to do with the other.

Yes, yes, of course. How silly of me; a careless slip of the keyboard. Jesus was not convicted of sedition; he was only accused of it and Pilate found no guilt in him. It's an aside, nothing to do with Joe Smith and the golden tablets.

So, back to the case of Joe Smith and the golden tablets and fraud. A warrant was issued for his arrest on a charge of bank fraud. The state of Missouri filed charges of treason and conspiracy to commit murder. Illinois officials charged Smith with incitement of a riot and later, treason against Illinois. An Illinois grand jury indicted Smith for perjury, fornication and polygamy. Smith was killed by a mob while he was jailed awaiting trial. No, so, I have not found reports that he was convicted of fraud. But I may be wrong there.

Be that as it may, the question remains: do you discount Smith's story about the golden tablets because you think he was convicted of fraud?

Or do you, like myself, disbelieve the story because it is preposterous and because the putative proofs and putative evidence are nowhere near extraordinary enough to warrant belief in such things?

Originally posted by @romans1009
Then you believe in the supernatural?

Define "supernatural." Define "believe in."

Do I think things exist for which we have no adequate scientific explanations? Yes.

Originally posted by @moonbus
Define "supernatural." Define "believe in."

Do I think things exist for which we have no adequate scientific explanations? Yes.

Then how do you delineate in your mind something that exists for which we have no scientific explanation from something you think doesn’t exist because there is no scientific explanation?

Originally posted by @tom-wolsey
Indeed! I saw it coming the instant I clicked the 'post' button but there is a difference. I have evidence--personal evidence. I can't prove it to someone else but God's existence has been proven to me. An atheist on the other hand has a lack of personal evidence as his or her only evidence. And it is fallacious to claim something is t ...[text shortened]... esented me satisfactory empirical evidence to prove otherwise. But can my claim be proven? No.

Right back at you Tom.

"I have evidence--personal evidence. God's 'NON' existence has been proven to me."

Originally posted by @secondson
Sir, I neither agree nor disagree, as your analogy falls short of framing the question in a manner that explains the apparent conundrum inferred. (As if that makes any sense) 😉

I will now attempt a coherent answer.

In doing so I will lift out of its context something Jesus said.

"If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he ...[text shortened]... ut agreeing with God, ultimately.

I hope that sheds some light on my perspective to you-ward.

It does sir.

Originally posted by @philokalia
The points that I brought up in my initial response to you about why you should believe those things were quite important to me, and you've now just totally shifted everything so that I am supposed to spend time arguing against Mormonism.

My guess is that you believe you are setting up a trap where, [i]by arguing against Mormonism, you will use the n ...[text shortened]... te philosophical systems while also not being blessed comparatively in the least to Christendom.

As Christopher Hitchens remarked, proving that God exists is the easy part. The hard part is yet to come. I am willing to grant that some sort of 'creative act' might have been the ignition of the physical universe. Call that "the God of the philosophers." It is a long ways from that to your 'linear series of events' and the triumph of Christianity, and that is the bit which is extraordinary, for which extraordinary data are lacking. So, why should I believe that particular 'linear series of events' and not some other? Some religions posit that the physical universe is a perverse mis-creation by a demi-urge or an evil demon. Given the existence of evil and injustice in the world--under every leaf in the garden, some animal is dismembering and devouring some other animal alive--given the lack of evidence of a life after death, the evil-demon mis-creation myth might be slightly more credible. At least it fits the available evidence better.

That the Christian message is edifying is no criterion of its truth. That lots of people are floored by it is no criterion of its truth. That it literally conquered pagan religions by obliterating their places of worship and outlawing their rituals is no criterion of its truth. That it changed the course of history is no criterion of its truth.

Tell us about the blessings of being burnt at the stake for heresy, for the thought-crime of believing something at variance with your 'militant church triumphant.' That was no mere aberration by a couple of deranged Inquisitors; that was the concerted policy of Christianity for centuries, and they would still be doing it if secular authorities had not separated religion from civic government and decriminalised thought-crime.

My guess is that you believe you are setting up a trap where, by arguing against Mormonism, you will use the nature of my arguments to argue against Christianity in general. The point is this: you believe things which are extraordinary and you expect others to believe them, too. The reasons which seem to you to be compelling have a psychological power which does not translate into logically cogent arguments or empirically verifiable evidence. And the proof of that is that Mormons are no less convinced than you are. Yet you are not inclined to give the Mormon faith as much credit as you give your own.

I give you both equal credit, based on the available evidence and the arguments you present. That Mormonism (or Buddhism or any other religion) has not (yet) conquered the whole of the population is no argument against its truth.

Originally posted by @romans1009
Then how do you delineate in your mind something that exists for which we have no scientific explanation from something you think doesn’t exist because there is no scientific explanation?

An example might make this clear.

I believe that my mother loved me. My belief in her love for me is certainly not based on anything I would present as 'scientific evidence.' I love my own children. I have no scientific explanation for this. I believe that my children also love me and believe that I love them in return. I have no scientific explanation for any of this. Neither is there anything extraordinary in any of this. I do not believe that love is simply a trick of my genes to get me to pass on my genes. My children are adopted, not genetic, so the 'genetic argument' gets no traction in my case. Love is something not explainable in material terms, yet it exists. It cannot be measured, yet it exists. I'm not the sort of person who thinks that only what can be measured exists.

That is very different from believing in things such as that a virgin gave birth, that the Transcendent was embodied in a particular man, that a man rose from the dead, that the man who rose from the dead was the creator of the universe. These are extraordinary claims. It's not just that there is no scientific explanation for such things. These claims are so far beyond anything of ordinary experience that they require extraordinary verification to be credible.

I readily grant that if I had met Jesus and seen him with my own eyes die on the cross and had seen him again three days later and spoken with him, put my fingers into his wounds, I would probably have agreed that something quite extraordinary had happened. But I don't know that that is really what happened, and the story told later on doesn't convince me. There is too long a gap between the life of Jesus and the writing down of the first gospel, too little information about who wrote the gospels and their credentials (not one of the gospellers actually knew Jesus, they were compilers not witnesses), too many gaps in the chain of custody for the original MS fragments, too many places where the impossible bits of the story can be explained by very ordinary means (e.g., Mary was not a virgin, she just lied and the Greek version mistranslated it, etc.).

I am still left wondering, even if all that is written in the Bible is literally, factually, historically true, and not just an edifying allegory loosely based some real historical figures..., why should I believe that God spoke only to the Hebrews and to Paul? Why should God not have spoken to mankind many many times, in many tongues and in many ages? Why should God never have spoken to man again, in the Koran or to Mary Baker Eddy or to Joe Smith? Their putative evidence is at least as good, and the chains of custody for their putative evidence are unbroken.

There is a pertinent passage in the Koran (forgive me if I cannot cite the verse by number; may some Muslim come to my aid here) where God's angel says to Mohammed, "To every people comes a messenger. It is not needful for you (Mohammed) to know who the other messengers were." Or, by implication, what the other messages were.

Originally posted by @moonbus
An example might make this clear.

I believe that my mother loved me. My belief in her love for me is certainly not based on anything I would present as 'scientific evidence.' I love my own children. I have no scientific explanation for this. I believe that my children also love me and believe that I love them in return. I have no scientific explanation f ...[text shortened]... ammed) to know who the other messengers were." Or, by implication, what the other messages were.

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I understand where you’re coming from but this stuck out to me in your reply...

<<not one of the gospellers actually knew Jesus, they were compilers not witnesses>>

On what do you base that?

Edit: I disagree with the bracketed assertion in this sentence:

Why should God never have spoken to man again, in the Koran or to Mary Baker Eddy or to Joe Smith? <<Their putative evidence is at least as good,>>

Originally posted by @romans1009
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I understand where you’re coming from but this stuck out to me in your reply...

<<not one of the gospellers actually knew Jesus, they were compilers not witnesses>>

On what do you base that?

Thank you for recognising that I have given some thought to this matter. I'm not a knee-jerk non-theist.

I base my judgment that not one of the gospellers was an eyewitness on scholarly consensus and on a critical reading of the NT.

Biblical scholars hold that Mark's was the first gospel, probably written no sooner than 80 years after Jesus's death, and that Mark was probably Paul's secretary. Paul never knew Jesus, neither did his secretary.

Luke and Matt. are generally held to be compilations from Mark and some other document now lost (and for which there is no evidence that it ever existed), called "q" (from the German word Quelle or source). Luke and Matt were written so long after the events in question that it stretches credibility to think their authors could have been alive during Jesus's lifetime and old enough to understand what transpired. They would have to have lived to 120 or so. And no, I do not believe that people lived significantly longer in olden times; there is no scientific evidence to support this claim in the OT.

That leaves us with John. John reads quite differently to the gospels of Matt., Mark, and Luke. It reads much more like the memoirs of someone who knew one of the Twelve, or who knew someone who knew someone who knew one of the Twelve, and wrote down what his master had told him, 80 or 100 years after the events. That's a long gap, especially when we are asked to believe that the dialog between Jesus and Pilate ("Art thou the King of the Jews..." ) is a verbatim account. Not one of Jesus's disciples dared to come with him to be interrogated by Pilate; they were terrified they'd be tortured and executed. Indeed, one of them thrice denied knowing him. So who recounts that dialog? It just doesn't add up as eyewitness testimony.

Textually, the gospel attributed to John refers to the Jewish scriptures (the Tanakh, more or less identical with the Christian Old Testament), probably in the Greek translation, and quotes from them directly, references important figures from them, and uses narratives from them as the basis for several of the discourses. But the author was also familiar with non-Jewish sources: the Logos of the prologue (the Word that is with God from the beginning of creation) derives from both the Jewish concept of Lady Wisdom and from the Greek philosophers, while John 6 alludes not only to the exodus but also to Greco-Roman mystery cults, while John 4 alludes to Samaritan messianic beliefs. It's hard to believe that one of Jesus's Apostles, simple Jewish fishermen, would have been familiar with Greco-Roman philosophy or mystery cults or the literature around them. It looks like someone else embellished the account, someone literate in Greco-Roman traditions, and this suggests that a redaction took place, especially to make it palatable and interesting for a Greco-Roman audience. This suggests that whoever wrote it was not one and same as John the Beloved Disciple of Jesus himself, but someone else writing anonymously and attributing the sayings to that John. This view has strong scholarly consensus behind it.

Originally posted by @moonbus
Thank you for recognising that I have given some thought to this matter. I'm not a knee-jerk non-theist.

I base my judgment that not one of the gospellers was an eyewitness on scholarly consensus and on a critical reading of the NT.

Biblical scholars hold that Mark's was the first gospel, probably written no sooner than 80 years after Jesus's death, a ...[text shortened]... attributing the sayings to that John. This view has strong scholarly consensus behind it.

This is an interesting article...

When were the gospels written and by whom?
by Matt Slick

Dating the gospels is very important. If it can be established that the gospels were written early, say before the year A.D. 70, then we would have good reason for believing that they were written by the disciples of Jesus himself. If they were written by the disciples, then their reliability, authenticity, and accuracy are better substantiated. Also, if they were written early, this would mean that there would not have been enough time for myth to creep into the gospel accounts since it was the eyewitnesses to Christ's life that wrote them. Furthermore, those who were alive at the time of the events could have countered the gospel accounts; and since we have no contradictory writings to the gospels, their early authorship as well as apostolic authorship becomes even more critical.

Destruction of the temple in A.D. 70, Luke and Acts
None of the gospels mention the destruction of the Jewish temple in A.D. 70. This is significant because Jesus had prophesied concerning the temple when He said "As for these things which you are looking at, the days will come in which there will not be left one stone upon another which will not be torn down." (Luke 21:6, see also Matt. 24:1; Mark 13:1). This prophecy was fulfilled in A.D. 70 when the Romans sacked Jerusalem and burned the temple. The gold in the temple melted down between the stone walls; and the Romans took the walls apart, stone by stone, to get the gold. Such an obvious fulfillment of Jesus' prophecy most likely would have been recorded as such by the gospel writers who were fond of mentioning fulfillment of prophecy if they had been written after A.D. 70. Also, if the gospels were fabrications of mythical events, then anything to bolster the Messianic claims--such as the destruction of the temple as Jesus said--would surely have been included. But, it was not included suggesting that the gospels (at least Matthew, Mark, and Luke) were written before A.D. 70.

Similarly, this argument is important when we consider the dating of the book of Acts which was written after the gospel of Luke and by Luke himself. Acts is a history of the Christian church right after Jesus' ascension. Acts also fails to mention the incredibly significant events of A.D. 70, which would have been extremely relevant and prophetically important and would require inclusion into Acts had it occurred before Acts was written. Remember, Acts is a book of history concerning the Christians and the Jews. The fact that the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple is not recorded is very strong evidence that Acts was written before A.D. 70. We add to this the fact that Acts does not include the accounts of "Nero's persecution of the Christians in A.D. 64 or the deaths of [the apostle] James (A.D. 62), Paul (A.D. 64), and Peter (A.D. 65),"1 and we have further evidence that it was written early.

If we look at Acts 1:1-2 it says, "The first account I composed, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when He was taken up, after He had by the Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles whom He had chosen." Most scholars affirm that Acts was written by Luke and that Theophilus (Grk. "lover of God" "may have been Luke's patron who financed the writing of Luke and Acts."2 This means that the gospel of Luke was written before Acts.

"At the earliest, Acts cannot have been written prior to the latest firm chronological marker recorded in the book - Festus's appointment as procurator (24:27), which, on the basis of independent sources, appears to have occurred between A.D. 55 and 59."3
"It is increasingly admitted that the Logia [Q] was very early, before A.D.50, and Mark likewise if Luke wrote the Acts while Paul was still alive. Luke's Gospel comes (Acts 1:1) before the Acts. The date of Acts is still in dispute, but the early date (about A.D. 63) is gaining support constantly."4
For clarity, Q is supposedly one of the source documents used by both Matthew and Luke in writing their gospels. If Q actually existed, then that would push the first writings of Christ's words and deeds back even further lessening the available time for myth to creep in and adding to the validity and accuracy of the gospel accounts. If what is said of Acts is true, this would mean that Luke was written at least before A.D. 63 and possibly before 55 - 59 since Acts is the second in the series of writings by Luke. This means that the gospel of Luke was written within 30 years of Jesus' death.

Matthew
The early church unanimously held that the gospel of Matthew was the first written gospel and was penned by the apostle of the same name (Matt. 10:2-4). Lately, the priority of Matthew as the first written gospel has come under suspicion with Mark being considered by many to be the first written gospel. The debate is far from over.

The historian Papias mentions that the gospel of Matthew was originally in Aramaic or Hebrew and attributes the gospel to Matthew the apostle.5

"Irenaeus (ca. A.D. 180) continued Papias's views about Matthew and Mark and added his belief that Luke, the follower of Paul, put down in a book the gospel preached by that apostle, and that John, the Beloved Disciple, published his Gospel while residing in Asia. By the time of Irenaeus, Acts was also linked with Luke, the companion of Paul."6
This would mean that if Matthew did write in Aramaic originally, that he may have used Mark as a map, adding and clarifying certain events as he remembered them. But, this is not known for sure.

The earliest quotation of Matthew is found in Ignatius who died around A.D. 115 A.D. Therefore, Matthew was in circulation well before Ignatius came on the scene. The various dates most widely held as possible writing dates of the Gospel are between A.D. 40 - 140. But Ignatius died around A.D. 115, and he quoted Matthew. Therefore Matthew had to be written before he died. Nevertheless, it is generally believed that Matthew was written before A.D. 70 and as early as A.D. 50.

Mark
Mark was not an eyewitness to the events of Jesus' life. He was a disciple of Peter and undoubtedly it was Peter who informed Mark of the life of Christ and guided him in writing the Gospel known by his name. "Papias claimed that Mark, the Evangelist, who had never heard Christ, was the interpreter of Peter, and that he carefully gave an account of everything he remembered from the preaching of Peter."7 Generally, Mark is said to be the earliest gospel with an authorship of between A.D. 55 to A.D. 70.

Luke
Luke was not an eyewitness of the life of Christ. He was a companion of Paul who also was not an eyewitness of Christ's life. But, both had ample opportunity to meet the disciples who knew Christ and learn the facts not only from them but from others in the area. Some might consider this damaging to the validity of the gospel but quite the contrary. Luke was a gentile convert to Christianity who was interested in the facts. He obviously had interviewed the eyewitnesses and written the Gospel account as well as Acts.

"The first account I composed, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when He was taken up, after He had by the Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles whom He had chosen. To these He also presented Himself alive, after His suffering, by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over a period of forty days, and speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God." (Acts 1:1-3).
Notice how Luke speaks of "them," of those who had personal encounters with Christ. Luke is simply recounting the events from the disciples. Since Luke agrees with Matthew, Mark, and John and since there is no contradictory information coming from any of the disciples stating that Luke was inaccurate and since Luke has proven to be a very accurate historian, we can conclude that Luke's account is very accurate.

As far as dating the gospel goes, Luke was written before the book of Acts and Acts does not mention "Nero's persecution of the Christians in A.D. 64 or the deaths of James (A.D. 62), Paul (A.D. 64), and Peter (A.D. 65)."8 Therefore, we can conclude that Luke was written before A.D. 62. "Luke's Gospel comes (Acts 1:1) before the Acts. The date of Acts is still in dispute, but the early date (about A.D. 63) is gaining support constantly."9

John
The writer of the gospel of John was obviously an eyewitness of the events of Christ's life since he speaks from a perspective of having been there during many of the events of Jesus' ministry and displays a good knowledge of Israeli geography and customs.

The John Rylands papyrus fragment 52 of John's gospel dated in the year 135 contains portions of John 18, verses 31-33, 37-38. This fragment was found in Egypt, and a considerable amount of time is needed for the circulation of the gospel before it reached Egypt. It is the last of the gospels and appears to have been written in the 80's to 90's.

Of important note is the lack of mention of the destruction of the Jewish temple in A.D. 70. But this is understandable since John was not focusing on historical events. Instead, he focused on the theological aspect of the person of Christ and listed His miracles and words that affirmed Christ's deity.

Though there is still some debate on the dates of when the gospels were written, they were most assuredly completed before the close of the first century and written by eyewitnesses or under the direction of eyewitnesses.

Originally posted by @romans1009
Dating the gospels is very important. If it can be established that the gospels
were written early, say before the year A.D. 70, then we would have good reason
for believing that they were written by the disciples of Jesus himself.

BCE 70 would be 40 years after the crucifixion.

Why would anyone wait 40 years before writing that down?

WHY?

Originally posted by @ghost-of-a-duke
It does sir.

Whew! For a minute there I thought the light went out. 🙂

Originally posted by @wolfgang59
BCE 70 would be 40 years after the crucifixion.

Why would anyone wait 40 years before writing that down?

WHY?

God's timing.

Originally posted by @ghost-of-a-duke
Right back at you Tom.

"I have evidence--personal evidence. God's 'NON' existence has been proven to me."

But that's not possible. Your only evidence would be that you have no experience yet. Using that line of reasoning, there are endless (false) claims people could confidently make.

Originally posted by @wolfgang59
BCE 70 would be 40 years after the crucifixion.

Why would anyone wait 40 years before writing that down?

WHY?

Do you think they were doing nothing in the years and decades following Christ’s Resurrection?