(Part 2) Top products from r/DebateAChristian

>Christ didn’t really address hierarchy

Not true: "Jesus maligns those on top of the social hierarchy because he tends to think that the pursuit of prestige and wealth leads to a sort of idolatry that distracts us from the true good" (p. 116).

Jesus says we're not supposed to focus on accruing earthly treasures:

>Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal (Matthew 6:19-20).

\^ This is an indictment against those at the top of the social hierarchy, i.e. the people who own "treasures on earth."

Here's another criticism that only applies to those at the top of the social hierarchy:

>No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. (Matthew 6:24)

People at the bottom of the social hierarchy have little to no wealth, so this does not apply to them.

According to Jesus, people at the top of the social hierarchy will have a difficult time getting into the kingdom of heaven:

>“Truly I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God" (Matthew 19:23-24).

Jesus does not criticize people at the bottom of the social hierarchy (the poor) in such a manner:

>Pure Chrsitian altruism thus appears to run counter to the competitive and individualistic ethic of modern capitalism, where the presupposition is that we all do better when we develop the economy by competing with one another. Jesus, however, does not praise those who are successful in business. Instead, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus blesses the poor and the meek. These are not the winners in the struggle for survival; rather, Jesus turns his attention to the losers (p. 34)

So, you say:

>Slavery, in itself, is a discussion about the nature of hierarchy and class in a society.

And you claim Jesus never spoke on about "hierarchy and class in a society." But as I've shown, that's wrong. When you spend much of your time criticizing the rich for their wealth and honouring the poor, you're talking about "hierarchy and class in a society."

Jesus repeatedly condemned the rich (i.e. upper-class people at the top of the social hierarchy) for being rich. He advised them to sell their stuff and give their money to the poor (i.e. lower-class people at the bottom of the social hierarchy). According to Jesus: Blessed are the poor, not the rich.

Jesus recognized the rich vs. poor social justice issue. He condemned the rich. And, significantly, he actually ordered the rich to sell their stuff and give their money to the poor in an effort to correct the rich vs. poor social justice issue.

Jesus did not recognize the master vs. slave social justice issue, even though the Essenes did. Jesus never condemned masters. He never orders masters to grant freedom to their slaves. He makes no effort to correct the master vs. slave social justice issue.

He chastises the rich for owning stuff, but he never criticizes them for owning people. He tells the rich to get rid of their stuff, but he never tells them to free their slaves.

> You are making a huge assumption that the Bible is god's guide.

I am answering from within the parameters you gave me. You asked originally about JW's interpretation of Christianity. I think I am granted such assumption in the light of this fact.

> What about all those people who fervently believe the Koran or Old Testament (only) or the Upanishads or the Veda or any other holy book to be god's guide to man?

God will judge them, not me. My task is to spread His good news to them. If He deem them worthy of salvation, then they are worthy of salvation.

> Do you not pause and question what makes your holy book so special, what makes your holy book the true word of god? If other people believe in other holy books with as much you zeal as you do in yours, how can you tell your not falling into the same false belief as they are? How do you know you are following the true word of god and not some impostor?

I suggest Plantinga's book Warranted Christian Belief or C.S.Lewis' Mere Christianity.

My argument for it is fairly simple. The God worshipped by the Christians is the same God that was already being worshipped when Ur was the most important city in the world. The other gods came and went, but He remained.

> If you are truly following the word of god (bible) and Hindus aren't (in general), shouldn't you feel god more?

No, why should I?

> Shouldn't god give you some indication you are on the right path as oppose to how you would feel if you were Hindu?

O, but He does! Truth will set you free, and that is your signal.

> That is like giving your children a test and then rewarding everyone who answered the questions equally regardless if they got it right, and then punishing those who got it wrong (punishment depending on your belief on heaven/hell can simply be having it somehow worse off in the afterlife then another person).

The destiny of mankind is to stay on Earth. No one will be 'worse off' than anyone else.

> How are any of your children supposed to know what the right answers (any 'lifestyle/faith' that gets you the best possible afterlife) are if you give everyone equal encouragement throughout the learning process and test?

There is no best possible afterlife. There is a simple hope of eternal life here on Earth.

> If Hindus can/will obtain the same level of afterlife as members of your faith, then again I ask, why are you spreading your faith?

Why do you tell your friends when something good happens to you?

To answer why worship God (aside from the part about hell):

In Revelation 4, the twenty-four elders say:

>> “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.”

In Revelation 5, the twenty-four elders say about the Lamb who was slain, a.k.a "the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David", (i.e. the Son):

>> Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals,
for you were slain,
and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation,
and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God,
and they shall reign on the earth.”

which says why the Lamb is worthy to open the seals of the scroll,
and then the myriads of angels say:

>> Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!”

I presume that the Lamb is worthy to receive honor and blessing
for the same reasons it was worthy to open the seals of the scroll.

----------------------------------

> If you believe that God is omniscient
then that would also mean that he knows of all the people who will ...

That depends on your belief about the scope of God's omniscience.
See the page at Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, especially parts 3 and 4.
Also, learn about open theism which has these four varieties.

--------

> people ... will burn in Hell for all of eternity.
This doesn't seem like the kind of thing a loving god would do.

Many of us believe that people are in hell for a finite time, not eternity,
and many of us believe that only some people, not all, receive immortality.

This article by Greg Boyd explains his reasons toward annihilationism. I recommend reading it.

------

There are three views about hell that Christians hold, and this image depicts attributes of the three views. Each of the three views has some verses to support it. See this book for a discussion of the verses and arguments for/against each view.

-------

> Why worship God if he created Hell?

I worship God for reasons such as those listed in the first part of this comment,
and I am fine with the idea that He created Hell and brings about punishments on people
for the wrongs that they chose to commit during their lives.

>free will by definition requires the possibility of choosing the wrong thing or making a bad choice. and those people who always choose good of their own free will, they exist, but they all live in heaven.

There are many things that human beings cannot do. We cannot fly unassisted or travel faster than the speed of light. However, we are never tempted to say that this restrictions on our ability somehow infringe upon our free will. Even though our possible actions are restricted by a set of parameters, we are still free within those parameters - free will does not require infinite choice.

Given this, it is logically possible that God could have created beings that such that they would always freely choose the good. That is, that these beings would have only innocent inclinations - what Kant called holy will.

>if he interfered then he has compromised our freedom to choose the wrong thing and thus we would not have free will.

Why does having free will necessarily require the ability to harm others? Couldn't God, being omnipotent, have created a world in which people who chose evil harmed only themselves through their actions, and not been able to cause innocents to suffer. I fail to see how this would in any way impinge on those agents' free will.

Clearly, this is not the world we live in. We live in a world in which those who choose evil can inflict harm on others, which seems to suggest that either God does not have the capacity to do this (in which case he is not omnipotent) or does not have the inclination to (in which case he is not omnibenevolent).

>if we choose to live in the material world, suffering and death are unavoidable. it is our choice to live in this world that is the bad choice we have made.

In what way do we choose to live in this world? I'm sorry, but this seems utterly nonsensical to me. We are simply born into the material world; there is no choice involved.

>if you choose to jump off a building, is gravity responsible for your injuries?

Of course not. In that case it is your choice that caused the suffering. However, there are plenty of cases where the free choice of moral agents is in no way responsible for the suffering caused. This is the definition of natural evil.

For example, in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, rescue efforts were hampered by rain. If not for that rain, it is surely possible that a few more people might have been pulled from the wreckage. Even assuming that the WTC attacks happened because of the perpetrators exercising their free will, there's no reason for God to have made the situation worse by hampering rescue efforts. Surely God could have simply not sent this rain, or made it not rain, without infringing on anyone's free will.

>wasn't sure of your exact argument for libertarian free will so haven't replied to that.

I certainly don't have an argument for libertarian free will. I do have an argument against it, but it's not really something I can sum up in a short reddit post. If you're interested, I'd encourage you to read Sam Harris' excellent book Free Will. As I said in my first post, the free will defense does require libertarian free will and that's not something I think exists, so for me the argument really does stop there.

>Acts is later than Luke, and mentions nothing of James' or Peter's death, Nero's persecutions, the Jewish war against Rome, or the fall of Jerusalem.

Acts purports to record events up to about 60. None of those things would be relevant to the time period about which Acts was written. However, since you admit Acts was written with or after Luke, Luke 19:41-44 and 21:20-24 are clearly references to the destruction of the temple, so Luke is post-70, so Acts is as well.

>Many of the expressions in Acts are early and theologically primitive.

On the contrary, the theology of Acts seems consistent with the Pastorals and Polycarp, moving it into the second century. This would be consistent with the use of Josephus' Antiquities, since that wasn't published until 93.

>There were eyewitnesses around during the writing of the Gospels and Epistles.

For the Gospels, this is assuming the early dates you prefer, which I and most scholars dispute. For (most of) the epistles, this point is technically correct, but irrelevant, since the epistles from that period don't claim eyewitness sources, or for that matter say anything about Jesus that would have either used or contradicted such sources.

>Remember that persecution was severe, from Nero to Domitian.

There's no good evidence of that.

>Also remember that many of these works, including many works by Roman historians, are no longer extant.

Oh, I'm well aware of that. But you can't argue from evidence you don't have. Yes, there certainly were documents produced during that time. There were likely hundreds, if not thousands, of relevant documents, from doctrinal letters to tax receipts. But we don't have them, so we have no idea what they said.

Personally, I suspect 1 Clement was written in the 60s, not 95 as traditionally thought. He's unaware of the Gospel story, references the deaths of Peter and Paul as recent, and is unaware of the destruction of the Temple or even that the Jews had ever been at war with Rome. If the Neronian persecution in 64 happened, Clement is unaware of that, as the victims aren't included in his list of martyrs, which would put Clement prior to 64, but since that event probably didn't happen, it's less clear. Of course, if it's true that 1 Clement dates to the 60s and not 95, that means we don't have anything after the 60s until Ignatius in 110 (or maybe 160, or anywhere in between).

>This is a theory and nothing more.

It's the leading theory in Johannine scholarship, so I'm pretty confident with it.

>The order of all the Gospels is jumbled.

Let's just put it out there: The Christian documentary corpus is among the most compromised bodies of evidence in all of history. The documents that make up the New Testament underwent extensive editing, interpolation, redaction, and revision over the first two centuries of Christianity, not all of which was mere scribal error. The extrabiblical evidence often underwent even more of this, with blatant forgery not uncommon (see my caveats on Ignatius above). Fully half the epistles actually in the New Testament are inauthentic.

This gets to the heart of the issue posited in the original post. In Jewish, pagan, and Christian religious literature, fabricating stories was the norm, even in stories presented as being true. Indeed, the persuasive power of claiming that a story is true is precisely why fabricated stories were presented as true.

For Jewish literature, even the Maccabean texts contain a lot of dubious material, but then you have the Enochic literature (which clearly influenced Christianity), Tobit, the Ascension of Isaiah, the Revelation of Moses, Joseph and Aseneth, the Testimonies of the Twelve Patriarchs, and all the haggadic midrashim. The Old Testament is mostly either fiction (Exodus, Job, Ruth) or forgery (Daniel, Deutero-Isaiah, Deutero-Zechariah). Philo of Alexandria wrote fictional biographies of biblical characters, like Life of Moses and On Joseph, while Josephus' Antiquities contains more stories about such characters, and he's a relatively good historian. Check out the 1st-century collection Biblical Antiquities sometime; it's basically an entire second Hebrew Bible, recounting entirely made up adventures of minor Biblical characters.

All of the pagan "novels" were religious in content. The Greek and Roman mythology that we learn about, stories about gods and heroes and sages, is actually pagan religious literature. So were all the tragedies dramatizing that mythology, and so were many of the comedies making fun of it. Plutarch's biography of Romulus is a great example. Romulus was a minor Greek demigod, later adopted by the Romans as their mythical founder. But Plutarch wrote a straightforward, historical-looking biography of him, placing him firmly in history, pondering which stories were true and which false, and published that biography alongside biographies of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, in precisely the same style. And a great deal of the biographies of even real people was also fabricated as a matter of course. Euripides' marital troubles aren't in his biography because there were any sources about his life, they were written in because of things that some of his characters say about marriage in his plays!

Christians followed this trend quite nicely. Most Christian faith literature written in the first three centuries of its existence was lies. The most obvious category is the apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, of which there are hundreds of extant documents; letters from Paul to Seneca, letters from Clement of Rome (beyond 1 Clement, if that's authentic), 3 Corinthians, 3 and 4 Peter (on top of the forged letters that are in the New Testament), a forged letter from Jesus to Abgar (on top of the forged letters from Jesus that are in Revelation), over 40 Gospels, half a dozen Acts (Thomas, Timothy, Peter, Paul, Paul and Thecla, etc), the wild stories from Papias and Hegesippus, the Epistle of Barnabus (which you referenced), the Decree of Tiberius (supposedly proving that Tiberius converted to Christianity). It's not some wild, improbable idea that Jesus didn't say all the things the Gospels tell us he said, because most of the deeds and sayings people attributed to Jesus are fabricated.

>Rather than perceiving John as a copycat of legendary material who cares not for history, John was plying the waters of prophecy and OT history to give evidence that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God.

Again, that this was his goal is a great motive for making up precisely those stories.

>Of course Jesus' appearances are after the resurrection—that's Paul's point: Jesus has risen from the grave and lives today.

The point remains, however, that this means Paul seems entirely unaware of any appearances prior to the resurrection. And since one of those appearances was to Paul himself, and we know the appearance to Paul was in a vision, and there's no indication that any of the other appearances were any different, it seems from what Paul tells us that Cephas, the Twelve, and the five hundred saw Jesus in visions, just like Paul did.

>Even Peter and Stephen don't mention the details of Jesus' life when they preach (Acts 2 & Acts 6).

Yes, and that's curious, because you'd think that when defending themselves in Jerusalem itself, to the Jews, literally weeks after everyone supposedly witnessed Jesus' final days in that very city, they'd want to bring up recent events. Stephen's 1200 word, five pages of Greek speech in particular is odd. Because he summarizes at rather tedious length the entire history of the Jews (which the Jews to whom he's speaking probably know), and blames them for Jesus' death (not a particularly good defense strategy), but he says that they killed Jesus by failing to follow the law and the Prophets. In addition to the fact that the recent miracles, ministry, trial, execution, and apparent resurrection of Jesus would have been far more relevant to his defense (but sure, maybe Stephen was just a really bad lawyer), it's entirely implausible that the Sanhedrin would just not argue against him. Unless, of course, Stephen and his speech are a literary device, and no argument against his claims was made because the author of Luke-Acts was writing for a Christian audience who wouldn't disagree, and who presumably just read his version of the Gospel story anyway, meaning they didn't need those details repeated.

> You’ve asserted that three times now and still won’t back it up with anything more than an online encyclopedia where the whole of epistemology can change at the click of a mouse.

I recommend Forged by Bart Ehrman. If you don't want to spend money and would like a quick version, here's a lecture he gives at Cambridge on the subject. Ehrman's not only a distinguished scholar in the field, but he's just a great character -- he was a fundamentalist Christian (like I was!) who became an agnostic atheist through intense, obsessive study of the Bible, while still retaining an incredible enthusiasm for and appreciation of Christianity and its history.

I honestly get into just as many debates with atheists who subscribe to the Jesus Myth hypothesis, a fringe concept that Ehrman vehemently opposes. He even wrote a book defending the historicity of Jesus. The state of Bible scholarship is really interesting, and Ehrman does a great job of relating it to casual readers, e.g. people who don't speak ancient Hebrew.

I have "seen" things that have convinced me. Not visually, but emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually my search for truth has always eventually lead me towards a belief in God. I'm not going to get into the individual things that lead me to be convinced of God as they are my lifetime so far of personal experience, education and seeking. But there is enough personal evidence to convince me to have faith.

I think you haven't seen anything convincing because you're looking for the wrong thing.

I could say that I don't believe in atoms, that I haven't seen demonstrable proof for them, you'll ask what would convince me, and I could say "I'll know it when I see it." You would conclude that I haven't examined the evidence properly. You'd find the fault in my view, not reality. How I look at it has no bearing on whether or not it is true. You trust yourself to be the judge of what constitutes adequate proof, but how do you know you're judging that properly.

God is something that would by nature be outside the realm of complete human understanding. We are biological beings with a limited subjective view trying to understand the existence of something limitless, something non-biological, something relational, spiritual, metaphysical. Yet you expect this very thing to physically manifest itself before your eyes before you'll even consider that it exists.

Even if it did physically manifest itself to you, through the lens of science, you wouldn't end up believe in the thing itself, just the bit that physically manifested.

What I'm getting at is that science can only prove the physical, so when asking questions about non-physical things you can't rely on science to reveal them. You can believe that there is only the physical, and science is therefore the only metric you need for assessing the truth. But as science can only measure the physical, you can't use it to prove that a non-physical doesn't exist.

You'll ask why this non-physical, if it does exist, hasn't reached out and confronted you, hasn't revealed itself to you. I'd say it has, but you choose not to listen, because you don't believe in it. You have to open yourself to it first. It's there. What you want is for it to take the last step, to make you believe in it. But you want it to do that on your physical terms.

Someone much more wise and eloquent than I can explain this idea better than I can:
Jordan Peterson on why he believes in God.

For the record I think the scientific case for God is also pretty decent. This book has helped me with that.

>If you want me to take the evidence seriously, this is the only way.

Baloney, it isn't the only way to take evidence - one simply critically exams the evidence - that the way to accept or reject evidence. But let's play your game.

Bruce Metzger was probably the most renowned NT textual critic in the last 100 year.

While the UBS5 or NA28 gives the conclusions of the textual committee that decided on the precise reading for each passage of the Greek New Testament, Metzger's A Textual Commentary of the NT gives the reasoning for each of these variant passages.

Here is Metzger's conclusion:

By comparison with the New Testament, most other books from the ancient world are not nearly so well authenticated. The well-known New Testament scholar Bruce Metzger estimated that the Mahabharata of Hinduism is copied with only about 90 percent accuracy and Homer's Iliad with about 95 percent. By comparison, he estimated the New Testament is about 99.5 percent accurate. So the New Testament text can be reconstructed with over 99 percent accuracy. And, what is more, 100 percent of the message of the New Testament has been preserved in its manuscripts! [B. M. Metzger, "Recent Trends In The Textual Criticism Of The Iliad And The Mahabharata", Chapters In The History Of New Testament Textual Criticism, 1963, E. J. Brill: Leiden, pp. 142-154.]

Now of course you will reject Metzger since he is a Christian. But curiously Metzger also wrote The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration with famed athiest/agnostic and Biblical critic Bart Erhman.

Ehrman and Metzger state in that book that we can have a high degree of confidence that we can reconstruct the original text of the New Testament, the text that is in the Bibles we use, because of the abundance of textual evidence we have to compare. The variations are largely minor and don’t obscure our ability to construct an accurate text. The 4th edition of this work was published in 2005 – the same year Ehrman published Misquoting Jesus, which relies on the same body of information and offers no new or different evidence to state the opposite conclusion.

Here is what Erhman said in a footnote in his book Misquoting Jesus: Bruce Metzger is one of the great scholars of modern times, and I dedicated the book to him because he was both my inspiration for going into textual criticism and the person who trained me in the field. I have nothing but respect and admiration for him. And even though we may disagree on important religious questions – he is a firmly committed Christian and I am not – we are in complete agreement on a number of very important historical and textual questions. If he and I were put in a room and asked to hammer out a consensus statement on what we think the original text of the New Testament probably looked like, there would be very few points of disagreement – maybe one or two dozen places out of many thousands. The position I argue for in ‘Misquoting Jesus’ does not actually stand at odds with Prof. Metzger’s position that the essential Christian beliefs are not affected by textual variants in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament.

So now we have, in addition to a Christian expert that says the Biblical text is 99.5% accurate we have an atheist/agnostic expert who agrees.

Note: to review the many errors in Erhman's book Misquoting Jesus see here

>I don't, but the possibility is there due to their organizational ties. You don't think it's in their best interest to skew evidence to further their narrative?

Can we level this same criticism at you? That you will "skew evidence to further their narrative"?

How does one even have a conversation if one assume s that their interlocutor is so biased that it interferes with their rationality?

It seems the best we can do is assume that we are all being as unbiased as we can and the critically examine the evidence and arguments.

> No authorized translation suggests that Adam listened to the serpent because every authorized translation says that Adam was punished for listening to his wife.

Authorized by who? and for what purpose were most of these translations authorized? Usually because the earlier translations did not conform to the teachings of the church, so they got someone else to translate it. The hebrew and aramaic texts the old testament is translated from are not vowelated, so the words can have multiple meanings.

> Would you care to explain why the Christian god would be OK with Adam listening to the serpent while punishing Eve for listening to the serpent?

Again, I don't think that this literally happened... It could have, but it makes more sense to treat these stories as creation myths. Have you ever studied mythology? It makes more sense to discuss the symbols they used and to put it into the context of the world in which the story was popularized. It could have been said that women were punished with pains in childbearing because of their consent to mate with angels in the book of enoch and create giants. Enoch however was not canonized and therefore does not hold the same authority that we give to genesis.

> However, if you want to admit that the Bible contains contradictions I am OK with that too.

I feel like I've said this before but the bible is not meant to be taken literally. It is a human interpretation of divine word that contains myths and metaphors meant to allow us to experience the divine. IT IS NOT MEANT TO BE TAKEN LITERALLY Genesis 1 and genesis 2 contain different accounts of creation. Read them again and tell me what cam first, humans or cows?

> So you are retracting your argument that we should disregard 1 Timothy because it was not written by Paul.

I realize now that I did not fully flesh out my argument, my apologies. I meant to point out that there are 3 different voices attributed to Paul through the epistles. It becomes apparent when you group them into different categories that they were written in response to different factors as a way of preserving the christian church in that area. The quote from 1st timothy about women should not teach or hold authority over man comes in response to churches having to compete with other religions that allow women to hold authority over man. It allows the church to point to this text and preserve its traditions. Historical context of the texts is always important to consider when quoting verses to prove your point. Try this book if you want some further reading on the background of the book of the bible.

> What book should I download and listen to that will convince me (a strong atheist) there is a god?

"The Call of Cthulhu" - a short story by American writer H. P. Lovecraft

Praise HIM so that upon waking HE may find you worthy and consume you first.

Just Kidding. We already know (gnostic theist) that Cthulhu exists as documented in the Lovecraft historical documentary story (disguised as fiction to hide the ONE TRUE GOD from heathens)!

As an agnostic atheist towards all supernatural Deities, and a gnostic atheist towards monotheistic Yahwehism, I don't know of any books that would convince you. However, if you would like to read/listen to one of the better known Christian Apologists - consider:

• Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics,
  by William Lane Craig
  
  Or perhaps something of a more emotional appeal ...
  
  
• Mere Christianity, by C. S. Lewis
  
  Both books have garnered many positive reviews by Christians.
  
  Neither is likely to convince a strong atheist (e.g., one that holds a knowledge position that no Gods, or specific God(s), do not exist), but I know of no book/set of books/narratives/evidence/arguments that presents credible evidence or argument to support belief or acceptance in any God - with the belief in Yahweh even more unsupportable.

Great question, only problem is there is way to much to be said about that to give a detailed answer here. This is something you could right volumes of books on (which already exist) so I'll do my best to summarize what I've found. To start we first need to look at the historical reliability of the bible, particularly the gospels. Here we have a number of things we can check.

• First to check is the skeptic claim that the manuscript copies we have now are unreliable. The reason they give is because the bible has been copied over and over again with countless errors being introduced and texts intentionally being altered to fit a particular theology or purpose. However, there is overwhelming evidence to show the copies we have now are accurate representations of what was originally written (99.5% accurate to be precise with the remaining 0.5% having no impact on any of the Christian teachings/doctrines).
  
  
• Next there is plenty of evidence to show the gospels were written relatively early (with the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, & Luke) being dated within 30 years of Jesus' death. We also have plenty of evidence to show the gospels were in fact written by the authors traditionally ascribed to them (that is Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) which means they were written by eye witnesses or close associates of the eye witnesses to the events. The evidence for these two points far outweigh the evidence I've see for alternate theories.
  
  
• Next thing we can check is the large amount of evidence from external 1st century non-christian sources that corroborate many of the events described in the gospels.
  
  
• Not only is there plenty of external evidence for the gospels, but there is also plenty of internal evidence as well. These come from undesigned/unexpected coincidences found within the gospels that corroborate the different gospel narratives. That is details given in different gospels under different contexts that unexpectedly line up and explain things in each other in interesting ways. The most extensive work I'm aware of lists 17 volumes worth of these.
  
  
• From here we need to examine the counterarguments to the previous two points. The first being external evidence that show supposed historical mistakes made in the gospels. The second being to examine the internal inconsistencies/contradictions within the bible. Every single one of these I have looked at has failed to stand of to the evidence and critique with many leaving you almost shocked that people actually present them as arguments.
  
  
• Finally there is plenty of evidence that the resurrection teaching is from extremely early on. Even non-Christian scholars date the earliest reference to this teaching that we have to within 3-5 years of Jesus' death.
  
  Now everything so far is simply setting up the foundation to show the gospels are in fact historically reliable. From examining all the evidence above we see that the gospels and resurrection story were not simply made up and are not merely myths and legends added long after the fact by people far removed from the actual events. From all this evidence we can see the gospels should be trusted at least as much as any other trusted ancient historical writings. From this foundation we can move on to looking specifically at the resurrection.
  
  
• To start we can first example the evidence that Jesus was crucified. From our foundation above and from non-christian 1st century documents we know this to be true and very few scholars challenge this position.
  
  
• Next we can examine a large amount of evidence supporting two important points. The first being that Jesus' tomb was in fact found empty and the second being that the apostles truly believed they saw the risen Jesus.
  
  When coming from the beginning of the foundation to the previous two points (the empty tomb and apostles genuine belief in seeing a risen Jesus) we are left with only on explanation, that Jesus was in fact risen from the dead. I've looked at a number of popular naturalistic explanations, such as:
  
  
• The apostles hallucinated the resurrection appearances
  
  
• they stole the body and lied about the resurrection
  
  
• Jesus never really died. He just appeared dead and woke up later and showed himself to the apostles.
  
  None of these or other natural explanations I've seen explain all the evidence, rather they can only explain bits and pieces leaving them lacking in explanatory power. Now if that wasn't enough there is still one more thing to consider, being the conversion of Paul. Paul began as a persecutor of Christian and somehow became a prominent leader in the early Church. If went from being a well of Jew to enduring severe persecution and hardships for the teaching he once persecuted others for having. According to his own writings it was through his own encounter with a risen Jesus that he became a Christian and his conversion remains one of the greatest evidences for the resurrection.
  
  If you have any more questions feel free to ask. You can also check out some of these sources for more details:
  
  
• historical reliability or the longer series here
  
  *Some books you can read are Who Moved the Stone. The author originally set out to disprove the resurrection but eventually became a believer after examining the evidence. Some other good resources are 7 Truths that changed the world chapters 1-2 and Evidence for God chapters 27, 33-36
  
  In addition you can simply good some of these things looking into both what skeptics and Christian apologists have to say on the issue.

I'll give you my answers, since they're definitely going to be considerably different, at the very least, from the ones you'll get from anyone else around here.

>Mainly, I'm interested in hearing the Protestant criticisms of Catholicism, and Catholic criticism of Protestantism.

I can't really speak to this one, as I'm not really either of those. There are Catholics that I would deem to be "true Christians" (e.g. Gustavo Gutiérrez, Óscar Romero, John Dominic Crossan) and there are Protestants that I'd refer to as the same (e.g. Jürgen Moltmann, Reinhold Neibhur, Martin Luther King, Jr.). Heck, I'd even call people who don't profess to follow Jesus yet act in a Christlike manner to be "true Christians" (e.g. Mohandas Gandhi, Ernst Bloch, Slavoj Žižek). I'm much less concerned about one's theology than I am about one's praxis.

>How do you view the "lukewarm" Christians mentioned in the Bible?

You're talking about the ekklesia in Laodicea in Revelation 3:15-16, right?:

>I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth.

These are Christians that refuse to take a side. James Cone has a good quote that I tend to go back to for those "Christians" that refuse to take a side:
>"Either God is identified with the oppressed to the point that their experience becomes God's experience, or God is a God of racism."

One could substitute any form of hierarchy for Cone's "racism" in that quote; race for him is an ontological symbol of oppression. For God to be a god of liberation (as Jesus' God was/ is) He/She must have an alignment with the oppressed. He cannot be neutral, for neutrality to injustices privileges the status quo. And just as God must take a side, so must Her/His followers. That's what the lukewarm Christians in Laodicea were doing - refusing to take a side. They were unwilling, perhaps afraid to be "hot," and thus were no better than the "cold" rest of the world. Revelation's God is saddened by Her/His followers refusing to take a stand - lukewarm is equivalent to cold, neutrality is equivalent to oppression, but it is much easier to judge active agents of oppression than its passive agents.

> How do you feel about the divide on social and scientific issues - where it seems Catholics are generally more progressive, and Protestants are generally more conservative?

I don't really have a great answer for the science one. If you believe in a Creator (I don't ), and you believe that that Creator is "good," then you should believe that everything that that Creator endowed you with, including the ability to reason, is likewise "good." Thus, denying scientific discoveries and theories because they go against a literal reading of a 2500+ year-old book is spitting on your Creator's gifts to you.

As far as "social issues" go, it should be noted that the metanarrative of the Bible is inherently a political story, one of liberation. Whether God is guaranteeing a "promised land" to slaves in Egypt or guaranteeing that He/She will bring Her/His people home from exile, the authors are making statements against empires. When Mark opens his Gospel with "The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God," he's making a direct statement against Caesar Augustus, who was said to be the bringer of evangelion ("good news") and whose full imperial name included the phrase Divi Filius ("Son of the Divine/ Son of God.") The anointed (Christos) son of god that brings the good news was not the Emperor of the known world, but a Jewish peasant bastard from rebellious Galilee. He went on a mission preaching a "Kingdom of God" (as opposed to an "Empire of Rome?") where "the last will be first and the first will be last." He attacked the center of social/political/religious/economic power of Judea, the Temple of Jerusalem, and was promptly executed by Rome with a method saved for political radicals. But then, the scandal! He was resurrected, denying the ultimacy of Rome's power and Rome's ideology, ensuring via promise that the "Kingdom of God" was something that can be achieved.

Liberation is the heart of Jesus' evangelion. Thus, as far as social (and economic. Especially economic!) issues are concerned, the God that Jesus professed will always be on the side of the oppressed, not that of the oppressors, for that would be the demesne of the God that named Caesar "Augustus." I hesitate to even affirm "progressivism" as the Christian God's ideology de jure; it's more radical than that. Jesus completely subverts what the Romans considered to be "reality" by presenting a Kingdom of God free of death (oppression). He revealed society's constructed nature, denied the invalid claims to ultimacy (because nothing man-made can truly be "ultimate"), and presented an alternative. Whereas Empire causes oh so many to fall into non-being, Jesus instilled his followers with the courage to be.
>And lastly, why do you think you've found the most correct version of Christianity?

Most correct? I hesitate to ever claim superlatives, but I am confident that my understanding of Christianity is much closer to Jesus' religious beliefs than the abomination of "mainstream" Christianity is. Why, though? Because I make every effort to read the Gospel with the eyes of a first-century Jewish peasant - Jesus' original followers and original audience. Or, failing that, I read it through the eyes of oppressed classes, after all, they certainly have a hermeneutical privilege. I read the Bible unpolluted by Plato's doctrine of the eternal soul or by the obscenity that is Constantine's in hoc signo vinces. I divorce myself from the assumptions of "nature" that our society makes, just as Jesus himself did. I reject the inherently flawed assumptions about a "just world" and those that affirm the powers-that-be as infallible.

What does that leave me with? Hope. Energization against an unjust world because Christ's gospel screams that there shall be a real, just world that we can bring about. Not just can, but must, for
>"Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. Peace with God means conflict with the world, for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present.".

So, am I confident that I've "found the most correct version of Christianity?" No, and I don't think that that's possible. But I have been to the mountaintop, I have seen the Promised Land, and I know the Kingdom of God. Exegesis, coupled with the hermeneutic of the oppressed, offers no reasonable alternative "Christianity" to the gospel of liberation. Sadly, instead of this "bottom-up" model, Christianity has long been co-opted by "top-downers" more interested in either explicitly imposing their will further upon the downtrodden or simply pushing their legitimate grievances aside in favor of otherworldliness. But again, God cannot be neutral, and what use is a God on the side of the powerful? Why let them continue to stack the deck, to stack their team? The only God worth believing in is the God who evens the score, who stands on the side of true (distributive, not retributive) justice, the God who killed all oppression and bought us liberation at Calvary.

That's a false either/or. Christians believe both that the Bible is inspired, and also that it must be interpreted (since all literature must be interpreted). As for how to interpret it, the Christian community must wrestle with the best way to do this. And we have. And we continue to do so.

While the method might appear arbitrary to an outsider, it is anything but. Its too complicated to spell out the actual methodology to you in this format. But if you're interested in how Christians interpret the Bible can you check out primers such as this one or this one. Both of these are good introductory texts in regards to the consistent (i.e. non-arbitrary) manner of biblical interpretation.

The only thing I would add to these books which sometimes doesn't get mentioned enough, is that Christians (the majority of us anyways) believe that interpretation belongs to the theological community in the most technical sense. While we encourage people to read the Bible individually, the theological community serves as a checks-and-balances, or a self-correcting mechanism. If we insist on only interpreting things alone, its too easy to let our own personal biases slip in, and then we are in danger of "picking and choosing." But by doing our interpretation in community (e.g. peer-reviewed journals, etc.), we help to eliminate much of this.

> Many of these 'proofs' you mention are just oft repeated statements.

No, many of these "proofs" are agreed upon consensus from historians and biblical scholars. No offense but I'll take their word over some random guy/woman that IDK from the internet.

> I can find no references from historians or peer reviewed articles that support this view among new testament historians.

Really? Go read up on it. https://ehrmanblog.org/do-most-manuscripts-have-the-original-text/

>The manuscripts used to translate the ESV or the HCSB are wonderful translations directly from the earliest manuscripts. I honestly do not see any strange inconsistencies with the new testament.

Well, given that I've just recently finished up reading the ESV bible, I cannot understand how anyone, who's actually bothered to read the entire bible, can say that.

> The earliest manuscripts of Mark were written 7 years after the events of the gospel and I believe the parts that were in later manuscripts are true as well.

Again, not so. The consensus is that it was written ~30-40 yrs after Jesus's death.

http://www.bc.edu/schools/stm/crossroads/resources/birthofjesus/intro/the_dating_of_thegospels.html

>The thing we must all wonder is why? Why would these men die for something that they knew wasn't true.

This is a fallacy. Men will die for what they BELIEVE is true but that doesn't mean it is true. Happens all the time. 9/11 hijackers and Heavens Gate are two prominent examples. Just cause someone believes it true doesn't make it so. I use to believe Santa Clause was true. I had good reason to think so. Such as the yr we went away before Christmas only to come home and find presents under the tree. Even got into a fist fight over the whole "is Santa real?" discussion in grade school. Of course, it was later reveal that my parents had us simply wait in the car while they went back in the house to get something they "forgot". But I sure did BELIEVE that Santa was real.

>We have excellent historical accounts of these martyrs deaths and many many thousands more.

Again, not really. Only church tradition that I'm aware of. No contemporary accounts. If I recall correctly, the bible doesn't discuss their deaths either. But even if we did, that still doesn't prove their claims. And as far as "thousands" of martyrs, probably only in that it feed early christian's fetish for wanting to be like Jesus. There's actually no real evidence that there was this centuries long campaign to persecute christians. Hell, there is actual evidence that chrisitans DEMANDED to be persecuted. In one case, a group of christians went up to a Roman official demanding to be crucified only for him to basically say: LOL! Go home, you're drunk. There was another group (name escapes me) that would go on raids just hoping to be killed for Jesus. Very ISIS like. read up on by NT scholar Candida Moss.

> If you could get passed that you still can't explain the insanely fast spread of christianity from 12 men to millions in a few hundred years. No religion has seen such growth in so short a time.

Yea....'bout that...Doesn't seem to the the case. Islam spread far more quickly and rapidly than christianity did upon it's inception. And remember, christianity didn't necessarily spread out because of it's message but because of the sword. The Inquisitions, Crusades, Manifest Destiny, Salam witch hunts, etc. In some countries, like Ireland, it's still a crime to blaspheme Christianity. I think it was Seth Myers who was recently looking at 2 yrs in jail over there for that "crime". Hell, there was a kid just about 3 yrs ago that was basically brought up on blaspheme charges in Pennsylvania and sentenced for portraying himself receiving a BJ from a Jesus statue.

>My theory is that christianity especially in its earliest execution worked. It just worked. The miracles, the Holy spirit confirming, the whole thing worked, and people could see it for themselves.

I'll make you the same offer I make every christian who proclaims this. This is what Jesus allegedly said: He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.” Matt 17:20 (ESV)

If I see you walk outside and command a mountain to move in Jesus's name and it magically lifts up and flies off, I will give away everything I own to your church, done sackcloth and cover myself in ash. I will then go proclaim Jesus to the world myself.

To date, I've not had any takers but I sure have had a lot of apologetics and excuses given.

>Atheism requires far far more blind faith to believe than christianity.

No...No....that's not what it is. It's simply a rejection of your position that there is a god. Hell, you're an atheist for every god out there but one. I just happen to be an atheist for all the gods.

>Atheism is a religion, one that believes in chance.

No, again that's not what being an atheist is. I don't worship anyone/thing. There's no dogman associated with being an atheist. No religious text or rituals.

>Do the math. Do you know the odds of a universe coming into existance out of nothing? It's zero. Out of nothing, nothing comes.

How did you determine this? How did you determine that the universe came out of "nothing"? Because, to my knowledge, no-one knows that answer. But the fact is that a universe can come out of "nothing" but "nothing" isn't what you think it is. Yea, it's complicated. I've listened to the book a
few times on Audible and I think I have a grasp of it. But it's a pretty bold statement you're making there and I'll challenge you to tell me how you know what the initial conditions were at that time. It's the same reason I disagree with Stephen Hawkings reasoning on why he doesn't believe in a god. In short, time began when the universe did so therefore, there was no time for a god to exist in. Now I don't pretend to be on his level of intellegence but I would LOVE to sit down and discuss it with him and I would ask him the same I'm asking you: How do you know?

That aside, improbable things happen all the time. For example, what do you think is the probability of a specific leaf falling off a tree on a trail out in the middle of the woods in central Russia and hitting me in the face on Oct 12th, 2032 at 2:34:43PM? I would argue that the probability is so low as to be zero. You surely wouldn't make a bet of it I'm sure. However, it CAN happen, correct?

>The chicken very obviously must have come before the egg.

Nope, the egg came long before the chicken ever evolved. Dinosaurs laid them. We even have some fossilized dino eggs.

>Causes do not come from effects.

Ok. So what caused your god to come into being?

A very good response to God allowing suffering to occur can be found in The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis. I suggest reading the book in its entirety, but this is a pretty good summary of the book. It is a compelling read and gives an answer to this question.

I would recommend reading The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel, not because I'm trying to convert you but I do think there are a lot of good points brought up by a lot of Ivy League PhD scholars. The more knowledge the better, even if you still find it insufficient

The Case for Christ - Once past the first chapter or so, this book falls into stride, and has interviews with lots of really intelligent people. As a former athiest, seeing/interacting with people more intelligent than myself that are Christians was the largest contributing factor to me opening up to the idea of God. Either way, bravo for at least wanting to see what all the fuss is about!

It might be best to just jump into the literature itself. Like both articles on VE stated, there are different camps, though they're not always mutually exclusive. And Wiki mentioned Alvin Plantinga. He's quasi-VE, but written very directly on the subject you're interested in. He has a paper called "Justification and Theism" that predates his trilogy on warrant, the last one titled Warranted Christian Belief. In fact, I have an abridged chapter of that book; Plantinga presented it as a paper at a conference years ago. I also have, from that same conference, a paper "Proper Epistemic Function and the Intellectual Virtues" by Jay Wood and Robert C. Roberts, who are referenced in the Stanford Encyclopedia entry on VE. There's also a paper on Proper Function in science. I don't mind scanning these papers and emailing or uploading them.

I also think that you would benefit from subjecting Foundationalism (which includes both Empiricism and Rationalism) to much more critical scrutiny, and for reasons unrelated to "supernatural" questions. The foundations are illusory. Richard Rorty, who was thoroughly atheist himself, had some of the harshest criticisms of Foundationalism.

>Capitalism claims that it is up to the poor to free themselves from poverty, and that direct handouts to the poor do not work because they do not help the poor to develop the virtues that are necessary for success in the capitalist system. Indeed, welfare assistance can serve further to undermine the self-esteem of the poor both by focusing attention on their failures and by making them dependent on those who give the assistance. Communism, in opposition to this, holds that what is needed is a revolution of the free-market system that will allow for the communal ownership of social property and an equal distribution of social wealth. Here, the solution is to create a system in which basic human needs are fulfilled. As Marx put it: "To each according to his needs." The difficulty of this proposal, according to capitalism, is that it creates dependence and undermines self-esteem. And such a system would also undermine productivity by creating disincentives for innovation and hard work. According to the capitalism critique, a communist organization of society would create greater and more pervasive poverty in the long run.
>
>There are clearly complex issues to be considered in thinking about poverty. But Jesus' answer is lacking in complexity. His solution is simple: give to the poor. In Luke (6:30-31), Jesus says: "Give to every one who begs from you; and of him who takes away your goods do not ask them again. And as you wish that men would do to you, do so to them." This ideal of pure Christian altruism thus appears to reward theft. And it runs counter to the competitive and individualistic ethic of modern capitalism grounded in the idea of private property. A capitalist would wonder how Jesus proposes to get people to work for a living, if begging and thievery are allowed. But Jesus is not concerned with the question of work. He himself never works. Nor does he advocate learning a trade and earning a living. In fact, in the famous "lilies of the field" passage (Matthew 6:25), Jesus tells us not to worry about work because God will provide. Jesus explicitly tells his followers not to worry about where food, drink, and clothing will come from: "Seek first righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well" (Matthew 6:33). And this is why Jesus also tells his followers to sell all they own and give alms to the poor (Luke 12:33; Matthew 19:21): the poor would be sustained by such donations. But Jesus does not explain how this whole system is supposed to function if everyone follows his advice and no one is left worrying about how to produce food, drink, and clothing. (What Would Jesus Really Do?, pp. 120-121)

If you actually take a critical look at what Jesus taught, it's obvious that Jesus was the furthest thing from a capitalist.

Honestly, I'm not one hundred percent up to speed on more than the basics of essentialism, though David Oderberg seems to have no compunctions about accepting both evolution and essentialism in the later chapters of his book on the topic: https://www.amazon.com/Essentialism-Routledge-Studies-Contemporary-Philosophy/dp/041587212X?SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&tag=duckduckgo-d-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=041587212X

Then we have papers like this which seem to take the question right be the horns: https://www.academia.edu/23058295/Aristotelian_Essentialism_Essence_in_the_Age_of_Evolution

Here's what I read in my grad school class. This is probably the best place to start IMO. Link.

Exegesis is looking at Scripture and trying to figure out what it originally meant to its audience. This means studying the historical context surrounding the verse. Someone mentioned Isaiah 53 not being about the Messiah. Why do they believe this? Well if you look at the historical context it makes sense that it's about Israel and/or Isaiah himself. Isaiah was traditionally believed to be martyred by the king of Israel. But later in the New Testament Paul applies a new meaning to the verse and attributes it to Christ. Which is right? Well as a Christian I would say both are important. Hermeneutics is merely taking what you learned through exegesis and applying it to a modern context or what it means to us.

As for learning more about it I could name many different books, but here are the ones I read first:

How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth

Grasping God's Word

Inspiration and Incarnation

> Citation needed.

The Bible Unearthed

> I have studied both Acts, and the Pauline Epistles very deeply

You haven't looked hard enough. Forged goes into more detail on it.

http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Interrupted-Revealing-Hidden-Contradictions/dp/0061173940/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1290888454&sr=8-1

The new testament still scores pretty good compared to other ancient writings/writers.

Most of the items he listed as discrepancies between the gospels fall in the category of "an omission by one author isn't a contradiction". The timing issues have been explained by the gospel writers using different calendars and methods of measuring time, and multiple sabbaths (Therefore multiple days of preparation) during the passover week.

He touts Mark as an example of fine Greek written by a very educated man, but it's written in a Greek spoken by commoners and slaves; even approaching the ungrammatical at times.

In short, it seems that he quickly goes through a list of one-line statements that represent his side of the argument and never touches on the opposing view; when entire books have been written on many of these topics.

> We make decisions based on option, experience, upbringing, that sort of thing

This implies that two people who had the exact life experiences would react the exact same way in any given circumstance.

> Indeed, we can only be held responsible if we actually have a decision making process

Given your previous statement, how can one be held responsible for the an outcome that was pre-determined by their past experience?


Lets say the culmination of the experiences and influences of a man's life determined that he would wake up the morning of October 1st 2013 and decide to kill his neighbor. Your first statement implies that if you had lived his exact life up to that point, you would make the exact same decision he did.


This rules out the idea that he was, in fact, responsible for his decision to kill. The decision was simply the product of all his previous "experience, upbringing, that sort of thing". Do you assign the moral responsibility to him or to the culmination of his experience?


I know I'm not putting this forward very eloquently. It's a concept covered in the book Free Will by Sam Harris; a book that this thread has prompted me to start re-reading today.

>The terms are rarely properly defined, the points are rarely laid out concisely, and so on.

While this may be true of some particular examples, it's precisely the opposite for most of philosophy. It is layspeak where terms are rarely defined concisely. You can see an atheist here (PDF) examining Dawkins' argument, and trying to figure out what the hell Dawkins means by "complex", and then going on to conclude that the argument doesn't work and that Hume provided much better arguments against theism.

As for essence and existence, this is examined in minutia in multiple books, one recent important example being Real Essentialism by David Oderberg. He could be wrong, but I'd hardly call that "not-being-precise."

>Multiple (even one other) independent(/disinterested) verifiable source(s) for the supernatural claims?

Apart from "disinterested" (are there disinterested sources?), that's exactly what we do have. For the life, death, and subsequent resurrection appearances of Jesus we have multiple, independent sources. (I'm not sure what you mean by "verifiable" in this context.)

But please don't waste your time replying to me. I won't be able to add to what I just said other than to point you in the direction of other resources:

The Resurrection Argument that Changed a Generation of Scholars (YouTube)

"Who Moved the Stone" by Frank Morison (Amazon)

"Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony" by Richard Bauckham (Amazon)

Unbelievable? 29 Aug 2009 - Richard Bauckham on the Gospels - pt 1 (Radio Podcast)

EDIT

Also this:

The Real Jesus: Paul Maier presents new evidence from history and archaeology

What is the literary genre of Venom War, Issue 22? Considerable evidence points to the fact that it's fictional...it even says so on the inside flap.

Now, the Bible is a collection of ancient literature from a variety of genres of literature. Some of it is apocalyptic mythos. Some of it is erotic poetry. Some are historical records. Some are law. The Gospels are Greco-Roman biography.

Comparing it with comic books is rather shortsighted.

Apologies for the very late reply. If this is a topic you're interested in researching, I highly recommend the book All You Want to Know About Hell, by Steve Gregg. It gives a balanced overview of the three views of hell along with the arguments and rebuttals for and against each view.

The first point we need to make is that the meaning of the words (greek and hebrew) traditionally translated as "eternal" or "infinite" is not very clear cut. It could mean "everlasting", "beyond the vanishing point / out of sight", "from God", "time out of mind", "long lasting", or "of the age". So it definitely signifies a significant amount of time, but not necessarily an infinite one.

The second point is that often these verses don't actually describe the fate of the damned. For example, Mark 9:43 describes the fires as "never going out" but the people could be removed from the eternal fire or be consumed. Also Rev. 14:11 where the smoke from the damned burning ascends "forever", but the damned may have been consumed or purified and removed. There is not a single verse in the Bible that definitively establishes eternal conscious torment, but there are also no verses that definitively rule it out.

In fact, all three views are coherent and consistent with scripture. As such the deciding factor often comes down to the character of God. Which view of hell is most consistent with the revealed character of God?

The main problems with ETC is that

1. The problem of sin is never resolved. Sin is simply eternally segregated from God.
   
   
2. Knowledge of fellow humans and loved ones eternally suffering in hell goes against the peace and joy promised of heaven.
   
   
3. A loving God, if at all possible, would avoid creating beings who will be suffering eternally.

> It may perhaps be a grand illusion, a trick played on us by our brain, but would that illusion be any more grand than to say that it all is an illusion and we shouldn't simple become skeptic solipsists?

Well, there's some new breakthroughs in neuroscience that seem to point towards us not having free will. But to me, the idea that given the exact same scenario with the exact same inputs could result in a different decision doesn't make any sense to me unless you just say that choices are random (which I wouldn't exactly call free will either).

> I mentioned this in another post, but I believe that one sins against the observer. If a man beats his wife in front of his child, he sins both against the wife and the child. Moreover, a guilty person forgiving fully another guilty person would not be the fullest expression of mercy.

This answers why you think you should also atone to god, but it doesn't answer why you believe it's moral for someone else to take your punishment for you.

> This discovery of an empty tomb, the visions of post mortem Jesus and the belief-to-the-death of early Christians of the veracity of his being risen from the dead.

Not sure what you mean by multiply attested, but none of these facts are corroborated outside the bible. There's also new literature out there that seems to point heavily towards the idea that early Christian persecution was a myth.

Sorry it has taken me a little while to respond. It seems that in many of my discussions with people over evidences for Christianity, we disagree strongly on what counts as evidence. I am curious, do you think that evidence is subjective? Can something be evidence for me and not for you?

Thanks for responding to my points. Let me give some responses to your pushback

1. You can disagree with me about the supposed accuracy of the gospels. I agree this subject has been extensively written on and discussed from both sides. Again if you are interested in a scholarly defense of the gospels, I would point you to The Historical Reliability of the Gospels.
   
   As to your statement,
   
   > accuracy is no measure of truth
   
   I am not really sure what you mean by this statement. If you mean that the gospels accuracy is representing the life and words of Jesus does not mean that what Jesus says and later interpretations of his acts and words were true, then I agree. However, if the gospels are accurate in representing Jesus life and death, then the empty tomb and reported resurrection must be accounted for.
   
   
2. Again we might not be using the term evidence in the same way.
   
   > Why does that rise to the standard of evidence? That would mean there is no other possible > explanation of events, other than his actual resurrection, right?
   
   I have yet to hear another explanation of the empty tomb, the reported sightings by the disciples and followers of Jesus and the uniform pronouncement of the early church as to the bodily resurrection of Jesus which is a alternate viable alternative. I would recommend The Resurrection of the Son of God by N.T. Wright if you are interested in further reading in this area.
   
   
3. Humans are capably of incredible good and selfless acts, but also capable of intense acts of evil. I believe that are natural bent is toward selfish behavior which is naturally evil. Look at a two or three year old and you will see the natural ego-centric and selfish behavior towards which human behavior is inclined. Christianity provides a viable explanation for why this is true of humans and accounts for the existence of evil.
   
   Beyond that point, the existence of a category which we call evil demands an external standard by which good and evil can be measured. A moral law demands a moral law giver. See Mere Christianity by CS Lewis.
   
   
4. By no means am I trying to use the argument, "I don't believe in evolution, therefore God exists." That would be a vast over simplification and a terrible argument. I would identify myself as a proponent of some form of Theistic Evolution. However, I don't think that evolutionary theory has provided a satisfactory answer to the origin of the universe. How did it start? Why is something here instead of nothing?
   
   
5. Again, I am not making the claim that "Something is happening, therefore God exists." I am simply saying that transformed lives are an evidence of something happening in that persons life which needs to be accounted for. You can appeal to drugs, social pressures, etc.. but it must be accounted for somehow.
   
   I hope this provides some clarifications. Also, I am listed many books as references. I would be happy to read (or at least skim) anything which you would recommend in this area.

>Unnecessary suffering, and some of it is absolutely horrific.

Here is a book written by a far smarter guy than me about the Problem with Pain and Suffering. http://www.amazon.com/The-Problem-Pain-C-Lewis/dp/0060652969

> I don't want to suffer, but that choice is taken out of my hands. I don't want to go to hell, but the only criteria I have to make that determination is ridiculous old stories from various religions and denominations. That is God's fault.

You have a choice in how you deal with every situation. Things happen to us that are out of our control, which is an aspect of a free world. Just because you didn't choose for something to happen doesn't mean you have a choice in how you react to it, for good or for ill. You don't want to go to hell, but you have the choice to either believe that hell is real or it isn't, and to live your life accordingly. You might be totally right, or you could be terribly wrong. But you have the choice to decide if it's real or not.

>You missed my point. Or, more precisely, the rest of that paragraph. "The child has a choice! At some predetermined date that is unknown to the child, if the child has not decided to worship the parent beating him, then the child will be beaten without mercy until the end of time. All the child has to do is truly love the parent..."

Sorry for not addressing this. While it is the popular belief of many Christians that hell is a place of eternal suffering, well, read this and see that some doctrine's have been kind of made up on the subject.

http://www.godsplanforall.com/mistranslationstomeanhell

>YES. That is exactly what it means. Parents are responsible for keeping their children out of harm's way, and they do everything possible to keep their child safe while allowing their child to learn how to operate in the reality that he lives in. Unlike parents, however, God isn't stuck in our reality, with extremely limited means to teach young people how to not hurt themselves.

You are saying that a parent should hover over their child constantly, 24/7, right over their shoulder, to make sure that no harm comes to them? Do you have kids? To do something like that would be smothering them! It wouldn't allow them to grow, and if you were there to punish them every single time they did something wrong, they would resent you. Eventually you need to let your kids make their own decisions. If the child was 12 and he was running through the house, is it still the parents fault? That child knows better by that point.

> So I cannot believe in God. So if God did have a presence in this world, and I still didn't believe in him, should I be tortured forever? And if I fought against that injustice, would you think that I was wrong to do so?

If I believed that God would torture you forever if you didn't believe him, then yes you wouldn't be wrong to fight against that. However, like the article above, I don't think God sends people to Hell forever. That was a question I struggled with when my friend (who was a non-believer), was killed in an accident. I just don't see how a just God could send someone to hell for eternity for a finite lifetime of actions, especially one cut so short.