re: A fact worth remembering: Those who don't believe in God argue against absolutes

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As an extension of that argument, even the claim that you must have empirical data to "know" something is true is contradictory since you don't have the empirical data or sense experience to "know" that the claim, itself, is true.

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It’s self-evident. If you don’t believe me, provide a claim absent empirical data that constitutes objective truth and not merely belief. Nobody, anywhere, ever has been able to do so.

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What pure empiricism does is bring skepticism of knowledge, itself, into the mix. It makes all knowledge claims untrustworthy since all knowledge would be based on the reliability of our senses, yet we "know" that our senses aren't always reliable and can be tricked. The entire basis if your knowledge framework is spurious and on rocky ground from the get-go.

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The only base assumption required is that our observed reality is real, which is an assumption everyone (including yourself) makes. Without such an assumption existence could have no structure whatsoever and all knowledge claims from all worldviews would be meaningless.

The only difference between you and me is where we go after making the base assumption we all must make in order to live our lives.

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Not only that, but I question your own personal knowledge based on your empiricism. All that you have learned that you believe to be true based on observations and empirical data are not what you have experienced, yourself, but are the experiences of others that you take for granted, on faith. You have not observed all that you claim to know to be true, so it's just another example of where inconsistency is hidden under the covers of your worldview.

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I believe in empirical claims with reproducible results. I can take anything I claim as fact and provide you with the evidence for it. Additionally, with the appropriate equipment and knowledge base, I can show you how to reproduce the results of the experimental data/observations which led to the discovery of that fact.

2 plus 2 doesn’t equal 4 because someone says so, it equals 4 because we can prove it does AND show you how to prove it as well. Likewise the global flood as described in Genesis isn’t fiction because someone says it is, it’s fiction because we can prove it empirically and show others how to prove it as well.

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Only three are actually nearly unanimously agreed upon, and those three are far different from what he presents.

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so you're wrong already. you aren't accurately representing what you are criticizing. the minimal facts presentation is based on the research he has ALREADY DONE from academic papers and he merely presented the conclusions from those papers. the ENTIRE LIST is agreed upon by most scholars - the ones that aren't being dishonest or biased.

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The fact is the ONLY two events which scholars generally agree upon is the baptism and death of a man the Jesus account is based on.

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let's see your research. list the scholars/papers you surveyed (you know, like habermas did) that you are drawing your conclusion from. let me guess, you read that on some half baked website written by a person who is antithetical to christian beliefs.

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There is widespread belief among NT scholars that the gospels are a collection of stories, slowly embellished over time

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this is obviously not true and i invite you to present your list of scholars/papers that lead to your conclusion. also, the evidence for the historical veracity of the gospels is precisely the opposite of your characterization; specifically that there simply wasn't enough time for deific legend to accrue. see wlc, witherington, blomberg, etc.

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(which is why the stories in the chronological order of writing become more and more remarkable)

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false at most, misleading at least. the quantity between matthew and mark is nearly the same. the quality is different given their audiences/literary aim and that serves as no sort of shortcoming of them

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and based on the lives of multiple first century apocalyptic Jewish teachers

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this is just laughable. but feel free to list which "teachers" you imagine jesus was "based on."

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Third, the teachings of early Christians spread soon after Jesus’ supposes death. I mean, duh. Nobody would even have a need to refute this.

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this statement is totally problematic for your position. there absolutely would be a need to refute that if jesus were "made up" as you say, particularly given witherington's research

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Catholics don’t believe James even was the brother of Jesus

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which catholics?

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and many scholars question his existence at altogether.

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who are these scholars? list them. also, do you know why the book of james is attributed to jesus' half brother? or are you just parroting what you read from some popular level skeptic website?

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Ultimately he falls victim to the same circular reasoning that most in his position do. He believes the Bible is reliable at face value, an unwarranted assumption

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i think you would be hard pressed to find ANY person who has ever lived who just accepted the bible as true prima facie you're trying to be a mind reader. and while it's not even an assumption, it most certainly isn't unwarranted. that's a ridiculous statement.

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When you don’t allow him to use the Bible to prove the Bible, he’s left with a few scraps of likely accurate history and a lot of explaining to do.

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no, he's citing academic papers over the last few decades that deal with the contemporaneous history

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If tomorrow every Christian alive disappeared and God left a message taking credit

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well this was totally predictable and that's why i asked. how do you know who all the "christians" are? you don't. how would you know a "message" from god that wasn't produced by something else, such as aliens or whatever. you don't. why can't your silly scenario simply be a mass hallucination? it most certainly can. i've seen plenty of other dumb answers that question. the point is, you are still making a fatal epistemic mistake in regards to evidence for god's existence. the question is if you will ever be able to wise up to see it. the odds don't look good right now because you're in hank territory.

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We have more information on some of Muhammad’s uncles and cousins than we have about every single person mentioned in the New Testament combined

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like this has anything to do with anything. have you ever read the qu'ran? do you know anything about what is claimed in it? if you did, you would know why your premise is ridiculous.

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Moreover, every single major player in early Islam unquestionably existed based on numerous non-Islamic sources

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just for the fun of it, let's see you list some

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We even have first hand paintings and writings of some of these people

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how do you know the writings are first hand? were you there to witness it? do you know how the authorship of writings from antiquity is attributed?

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We are only reasonably sure two of Jesus’ disciples even existed at all

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ah geez. who is "we?"

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NO first hand copies or evidence of anything done by anyone discussed in first century Christianity exists today

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tell me why you think the autographs are necessary to attribute authorship. also, i'm not sure what you're referring to. there are secular authors who do discuss first century christianity

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Using his logic, this is strong evidence for the truth of Islam

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you say this. then you say

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Of course Islam is nonsense because, like Christianity, many of its claims are demonstrably false and the rest of the supernatural claims have no supporting evidence

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it seems like you would get the clue

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with regards to the life of Muhammad and his followers vs Jesus and his, the former is exponentially more well known and better documented.

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i'm curious how you think you would quantify this particularly in light of the witness of the patristics

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Philosophers don’t get a seat at the scientific table because the nature of their field is a lack of falsifiability

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you are the type of person, much like hank, who knows enough to be dangerous. of course some things said by philosophers can be falsified, especially epistemologists. and we weren't even discussing "science." you said the word "real." that's not science. that's a gobbledygook word that is not typically used since the enlightenment to describe much of anything by the academic community. but you knew that already didn't you? now if you want to get serious, we can start discussing methodological naturalism and empiricism.

you are just like hank. you try to comment on academic and scientific matters from a popular level and try to pass it off as authoritative. it's laughable.

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It took me a couple of encounters with him to learn the Uncle Remus lesson

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this is coming from one of the WORST personalities on this board. how about you jump in and tell me what i've said that's wrong mr sapience. and then when you run out of ammo, start criticizing my vocabulary like you usually do

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Every other means of knowledge acquisition, in one way or another, attempts to label beliefs as knowledge

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did you know that belief can be "knowledge" if it's properly justified/warranted?

mind

blown

and this thread ended up like basically every other one before it

stupid statement criticizing christianity
stupid statement gets questioned
peace out