Never Been More Sure

[dB-Paradox]

Recently, I joined an Islam forum to learn about the Muslims and their faith. I needed to hear it straight from the horses mouth. It's interesting how their doctrine is so easily refuted by Christians who use a critical eye to point out the flaws in the things that Muslims have faith, and faith alone in, yet Christian doctrine is beyond the scope of any rational or critical thinking, relying solely on faith on many issues (namely the resurrection). For me, that was the final nail in the coffin! However, I did find myself doubting a little when I decided to read through Josh McDowell's "Evidence That Demand A Verdict". But I think I now stand at the place where there may be enough evidence to prove there was a historical Jesus, but that the bible's version of this man is mainly myth. What are your thoughts?

[qec]

My thoughts are that it's hard to see the picture when you're inside the frame... Or even assert yourself against the "picture". For most people this is a really big issue regardless of beliefs or lack thereof.....

[agjohnson]

I was interested in reading Evidence That Demand A Verdict until I saw a video by Josh McDowell. In the video he claimed that there were very few manuscripts that cover historical events that we accept as fact, and yet there were some ridiculous number of manuscripts (1,300?) of the new testament, showing how the life of Jesus must be historical fact. The problem was he was including transcriptions done by monks all the way up until the end of the renaissance, which is not the same criteria he used for the other manuscripts. I figured if he was willing to compare apples to oranges and present it as fact, I couldn't trust a damn word he said.

[Shyone]

One of the things that convinced me that Christianity was bunk was looking through other people's eyes and seeing what Christianity looked like to Muslims and other religious groups. Likewise, faith really becomes a poor means of discerning truth from fiction. It doesn't "ring true" for Christians when it comes from other religions, and it doesn't "ring true" for other religions when it comes to Christianity.

 

Faith and reason are mutually exclusive epistemologies, and the former is useless.

[kazza]

Two things stood out to me here...

 

Firstly the muslim thing - it was actually meeting muslims and seeing thier passion for god and fervent belief etc so very reminisent of my mothers and families passion for the christian god that started the snowball rolling towards my deconversion. My deconversion, looking back, had been brewing for a long while but then a number of things, books and people all happened at once and they formed the snowball - the muslims were a large part of that.

 

Secondly - josh mcdowell - how i hate that name!!! I read one of his books for teenagers when i was about 16 and without going into all the details (long and personal) i took some of his words to heart, applied them and have i regretted it ever since!!!!!! It really messed me up over certain issues - i doubt i will ever fully 'recover' from that particular 'mind f@%*&%$' - so pissed off with myself for ever reading that book and its nearly 18years later!!! Sorry just had to vent that one!

[YellowJacket]

Josh McDowell is a name I've heard all my life - in fact I think he came to dinner at our house in the 70s. Wasn't he the Campus Crusade for Christ guy? I was a tween at the time, and was unimpressed w/ his goodness jargon. Never read his stuff - Kazza could you elaborate on how it damaged you? We had those little "4 Spiritual Laws" around the house when I was junior hi age - I remember a CCfC person trying to witness to me in the school yard after hrs - when I told her I knew the 4 Laws and had read her tract and already knew Jeeezus, etc. she got FURIOUS w/ me cuz I wasn't following the formula of "witnessing" she'd been taught. She started screaming "If this is all just a joke to you're NEVER going to know God". I remember shrugging her off.

[kazza]

Sorry i know thats a bit tantalising saying that it damaged me and not elaborating its just its something that is kinda hard to explain but nearly impossible for other people to understand - the few people i have tried to explain it to just really didnt get it - its probably also more apporpriate for another forum - you know the one thats pass word protected - ha! I might pluck up the courage / foolishness (??) to post about in the future or i might not!! But i would love to burn that book...ha!

[ShackledNoMore]

I was interested in reading Evidence That Demand A Verdict until I saw a video by Josh McDowell. In the video he claimed that there were very few manuscripts that cover historical events that we accept as fact, and yet there were some ridiculous number of manuscripts (1,300?) of the new testament, showing how the life of Jesus must be historical fact. The problem was he was including transcriptions done by monks all the way up until the end of the renaissance, which is not the same criteria he used for the other manuscripts. I figured if he was willing to compare apples to oranges and present it as fact, I couldn't trust a damn word he said.

 

I read Evidence That Demands a Verdict about 30 years ago. It was supposed to bolster my weakening faith. While many of the details in the book have faded in my mind over time, it simply did not impress me very much when I read it, and it was exactly because I could not walk away convinced that he had "made his case." I think I remember something about him saying that there were a lot of direct witnesses to actual events, when in fact there were only allegations in the gospels, which he also unconvincingly tried to validate, etc. I ended up walking away thinking, "meh," instead of having my beliefs fully solidified by compelling evidence as I was led to believe I should be before reading the book.

 

One of the things that convinced me that Christianity was bunk was looking through other people's eyes and seeing what Christianity looked like to Muslims and other religious groups. Likewise, faith really becomes a poor means of discerning truth from fiction. It doesn't "ring true" for Christians when it comes from other religions, and it doesn't "ring true" for other religions when it comes to Christianity.

 

Faith and reason are mutually exclusive epistemologies, and the former is useless.

 

I had a comparable experience that was a real eye opener. A couple of years after I had read "Evidence" and a couple of years before I really deconverted, I met a guy who was a prodigal but now repentant member of the "no name" church cult (I had never heard of this particular cult and I think there would be little information on them to this day if it wasn't for the Internet. Googling "church with no name", "two by twos", cooneyite, or "tramp preachers" might provide some information, for any interested).

 

Anyhoo, we talked a lot, I went to one of his "conventions," and I took him to the biggest, flashiest, Ass of God church in town. Now this guy was truly "seeking god" as they say, that is, he was very sincere, and therefore, when confronted with "the truth" it was supposed to be immediately obvious to him that he had found it. At least that was the world view I had been taught and had accepted as part of my core beliefs, until they started to crumble. (Interestingly, one of the reluctant monikers he used for his belief system was "The Truth," even though these folks did NOT like labels. Fancy that!)

 

It came as a real eye opener to me, even a shock, when he dubbed the church service "entertainment." Now there were also obvious practices that the no-namers engaged in that were clearly written in the bible, yet were blithely ignored by my pentecostal crowd, such as hair length, dress, etc. At the time, I briefly wondered if THEY were right, i.e., the True Christians^TM, and "we" were wrong. Ultimately I saw that their cult was as nonsensical and brazenly absurd as my own, but at the time it really shook things up for me and it was a significant piece of my deconversion process.

[Shyone]

It came as a real eye opener to me, even a shock, when he dubbed the church service "entertainment." Now there were also obvious practices that the no-namers engaged in that were clearly written in the bible, yet were blithely ignored by my pentecostal crowd, such as hair length, dress, etc. At the time, I briefly wondered if THEY were right, i.e., the True Christians^TM, and "we" were wrong. Ultimately I saw that their cult was as nonsensical and brazenly absurd as my own, but at the time it really shook things up for me and it was a significant piece of my deconversion process.

Did he look like this fellow?

 

 

If not, then he probably wasn't really following the bible.

[ShallowByThyGame]

My interpretation of the bible is that there was probably a Jesus, but he was one of many guru types who tried to shake up the Jewish church now and then. He calls himself King of the Jews, and Son of God, which is arrogant and fearing insurrection the Romans kill him.

 

Some of his followers go through typical cult behavior, believing even stronger after their messiah dies, and begin to make up stories that they saw him after death, or maybe in their grief they really believe it, but whatever. Then 50 years later some scribes start to write these oral stories down, and embellishments are added and whatnot, people who truly want to believe will often skew facts whenever possible, so his mother becomes a virgin, and oh yea i swear he walked on water, for sure. And so on and so forth. So surely as stories say the Egyptian pharaohs had magical power, the story tellers give Jesus magical powers, and no one can fact check because there's not a lot of records and few people live past 40. It's not hard to create a religion, just ask L. Ron Hubbard.

[ShackledNoMore]

It came as a real eye opener to me, even a shock, when he dubbed the church service "entertainment." Now there were also obvious practices that the no-namers engaged in that were clearly written in the bible, yet were blithely ignored by my pentecostal crowd, such as hair length, dress, etc. At the time, I briefly wondered if THEY were right, i.e., the True Christians^TM, and "we" were wrong. Ultimately I saw that their cult was as nonsensical and brazenly absurd as my own, but at the time it really shook things up for me and it was a significant piece of my deconversion process.

Did he look like this fellow?

 

 

If not, then he probably wasn't really following the bible.

Wow, that looks frighteningly similar to Weird Al Yankovic!

 

Heh, heh, no, they weren't heeding THAT part of the bible, as in parts of Leviticus, they were heeding THAT OTHER part of the bible, as in parts of 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy (which happened to be passages that were ignored at my church). Still it seems they cherry picked with the best of 'em. I think most men's hairstyles were still longer back then, but by then you saw a mixed bag of longer and shorter hair. These men stood out in their creepy uniformity. Same short hair, beardless, and they dressed alike. But it was the women that REALLY stood out. All of their hair was long and looked conspicuously the same. They did not wear jewelry or makeup, of course, and they dressed modestly, in eerily similar garb. Though they may not have looked exactly the same, the women's dress seemed as distinctive from "the world" as RSMartin's old crowd would have been.

 

At the time, I was still influenced by the idea that if not an outright sin, it was at least "worldly" to have a beard. (Although I did have a beard then myself, and really stood out like a sore thumb at their "convention.") Leviticus is such a prime example where passages that are side by side are arbitrarily embraced as god's enduring law in one verse and rejected as part of an old covenant from which we've been released in the next, with absolutely nothing to differentiate them. In Lev. 19:27 it commands us to keep your hair and beard as shown in your picture, nearly universally ignored by xians. In 19:29 it tells us not to pimp out our daughter as a prostitute, which I daresay would be proclaimed the enlightened and living word of god by the average xian. It's even better in the verse before the hair verse: Lev. 19:26 says: "Do not eat any meat with blood still in it. Do not practice divination or sorcery." Lo and behold: part of the old covenant which we are freed from and a timeless and ever relevant command from god IN THE SAME VERSE!!! At the time, I had not yet considered this sort of thing and any exposure I'd had before then would have fallen on glazed over eyes or cherry picked or compartmentalized.

 

They had a delicious stew at the convention. At least it was delicious at first, because that was the ONLY thing they served over the entire three day period (I think it was three days). No sides, no changes in menu, just the same stew every single meal. The food was as uniform as their appearance. And they took the plates away after a few minutes. I stuffed my face as fast as I could without speaking every meal and was still slightly hungry when they took the plate away. A lot of other xians seem to call them a cult. Very odd bunch, those no-namers.

[oddbird1963]

Back in the 1980's and 1990's I read Evidence that Demands a Verdict, More Evidence that Demands a Verdict , The Resurrection Factor and More than A Carpenter. In fact, I recently sold my copies to Half Price Books. I was glad to get rid of them, along with the silly "Purpose Driven Life" book by Rick Warren.

 

I think the books are reassuring to Christians who feel like there needs to be some semblance of a historical basis for the Christian faith. The effort uses criteria that is "good enough" for someone who wants reassurance in their faith.

 

But, I later came to see that he really did not make his case for a historical resurrection.

 

What we have is a possible Jesus who is not accessible to us as a person of history around whom a series of myths, legends and folktales were spun. The early church elaborated upon these initial stories as they spread in the form of oral tradition.

 

 

Doing an edit job on a subsection of these oral traditions, the gospel writers recast these stories with further theological elaboration into the texts that were eventually handed down to us today.

 

As I often say, a thick fog of uncertainty and ignorance separates us from the life of an alleged Jesus that may have existed. We cannot access that history. It is lost to us. Was there a Jesus? Nobody can know. There is no evidence for him.

[ElrondHubbard]

I was interested in reading Evidence That Demand A Verdict until I saw a video by Josh McDowell. In the video he claimed that there were very few manuscripts that cover historical events that we accept as fact, and yet there were some ridiculous number of manuscripts (1,300?) of the new testament, showing how the life of Jesus must be historical fact. The problem was he was including transcriptions done by monks all the way up until the end of the renaissance, which is not the same criteria he used for the other manuscripts. I figured if he was willing to compare apples to oranges and present it as fact, I couldn't trust a damn word he said.

 

Apologists like Josh McDowell are idiots parading as academics. The simple fact that he equates a greater number of manuscripts with a greater level of historical authenticity shows just how little he knows about the entire field of textual criticism. Guys like him kept me in Christianity much longer than I would have been otherwise - they appeal to logic, but never mention the vast amounts of peer-reviewed scholarly work on the same subject that completely contradicts their entire message.

 

P.S. - I get tired of this discussion, but historically speaking, Jesus most likely did exist. He probably didn't look much like the post-modern evangelical conception of himself, but he probably did exist.