Sins Of The Fathers (4)

Till gives a good summation of the facts in this debate in his second response in this post, which Ariel has repeatedly side stepped:

ARIEL

sub 1: As an aside, my reference to an already existing three  year famine is not NEEDED to advance my point. It is based  as follows. II Samuel starts with an introduction that God was  already angry. Therefore God was quoted as offering 7 years  of famine. That means a full 7 years. 3 already and 3 to come  (the 7th is because after 6 years of famine, the ground may  be ready to produce in the 7th but the field must be planted and the crop grown and harvested. Since the people are still  waiting for food in year 7 it is the 7th year of famine).  I Chronicles does not prelude by saying "And God was angry".

TILL
No, the Chronicler didn't say this. In fact, he said that Satan 
had moved David to take the census. This is consistent with 
the Chronicler's whitewashing efforts in which he cut out all 
of the dirt about David and tried to make him look like Mr. 
Goody Two Shoes.

Wanting To Believe In Miracles

by Kenneth W. Hawthorne
A letter I sent to a Church of Christ preacher about 7 years ago:

Christians make the claim that God came to earth in the flesh of a man, Jesus Christ. That he was born of a virgin, performed various miracles while on earth, died and about three days later came back to life never to die again, then forty days later ascended into heaven, and that all or much of this was miraculously foretold by God-inspired prophets in the Old Testament. These are all ontologically positive and distant claims that go against all conventional, community experiences. These Christian claims, therefore, bear an extremely high asymmetrical burden of proof. That means that before someone should believe these claims are actually true, the evidence presented would have to be so profound and so unequivocal that one would be forced to believe these claims instead of believing what he knows happens all the time--and go with something that, as far as his experiences, has never happened.

Unfortunately, what I've seen as evidence for these Christian claims is not even close to being sufficient for the type of claims made. The four Gospels are nothing but hearsay, written by biased, anonymous writers. Certain church "fathers" made a fanciful connection to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John being the authors--but no one really knows who wrote these book. These church fathers amount to no more than what you would consider denominational preachers today--yet you believe them on this essential matter--and would, today, be very skeptical of anything they had to say on the subject of religion. But even if Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were the actual authors they were biased and what they wrote amounts to no more than religious propaganda. None of the  disinterested, contemporary scientists or writers of the time Jesus is said to have lived record anything about Jesus, much less his miracles. Josephus does not qualify because it is obvious that his work has been tampered with concerning his mention of Jesus and is therefore flawed and unreliable. Alexander Campbell had this to say:

Evidence Problems

I don't believe that miracle claims can be proven by testimony, however, I would be a lot closer to belief in the miracle claims of the Bible if the testimony for these extraordinary claims had reliable, disinterested, independent, contemporary corroboration. But, alas, there is none to be had. From the Errancy Discussion list, May, 1998:

TILL
You're still missing the point entirely. Commonplace, ordinary events of the past were often corroborated by records left by various sources, but in the case of extraordinary or miraculous events, with which claims the Bible is filled, not a single disinterested, independent, contemporary source ever corroborated any of them. Biblicists rave about the fact that Luke knew geography, topography, social customs, historical persons, etc., etc., etc., all of which can be considered only commonplace information. Miracles, however, would have been so extraordinary that they would have received wide attention. In Acts 2:22, Luke had Peter saying to an audience that numbered into the thousands that "Jesus of Nazareth [was] a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know," so the claim was that such deeds as these were done in the open and were witnessed by many people. If that is so, then why is there no disinterested, independent corroboration of them? 

Authorship Of "Matthew"

From the Errancy Discussion list, 10-4-97:

MATT

The consensus of biblical scholars normally means 'higher criticism', something I am none too impressed with. The Gospel is attributed to the disiciple Levi ooopppsss sorry Nancy :) Matthew, if there is evidence to say otherwise then Let's hear it.

TILL

Well, how about this "evidence", Matt? Those critics whom you aren't at all impressed with have recognized that the author of "Matthew" used the gospel of Mark as his source, because over 90% of the gospel of Mark is embedded in the gospel of Matthew. If Mark really wrote Mark, then he was not an eyewitness to the events he wrote about, but if Matthew wrote Matthew, he was an eyewitness to most of the events. Why would an eyewitness have to rely on an account written by someone who was not an eyewitness in order to write a biography of Jesus?